nds...."

His harsh, bitter mumble stopped. Then Sera-phina's voice said softly:

"It is you who are the friend, Tomas Castro. To you shall come a
friend's reward."

"Alas, Senorita!" he sighed. "What remains for me in this world--for me
who have given for two masses for the souls of that illustrious man, and
of your cousin Don Carlos, my last piece of silver?"

"We shall make you very rich, Tomas Castro," she said with decision, as
if there had been bags of gold in the boat.

He returned a high-flown phrase of thanks in a bitter, absent whisper.
I knew well enough that the help he had given me was not for money, not
for love--not even for loyalty to the Riegos. It was obedience to the
last recommendation of Carlos. He ran risks for my safety, but gave me
none of his allegiance.

He was still the same tubby, murderous little man, with a steel blade
screwed to the wooden stump of his forearm, as when, swelling his
breast, he had stepped on his toes before me like a bloodthirsty pigeon,
in the steerage of the ship that had brought us from home. I heard him
mumble, with almost incredible, sardonic contempt, that, indeed,
the senor would soon have none but dead friends if he refrained
from striking at his enemies. Had the senor taken the very excellent
opportunity afforded by Providence, and that any sane Christian man
would have taken--to let him stab the Juez O'Brien--we should not then
be wandering in a little boat. What folly! What folly! One little thrust
of a knife, and we should all have been now safe in our beds....

His tone was one of weary superiority, and I remained appalled by that
truth, stripped of all chivalrous pretence. It was clear, in sparing
that defenceless life, I had been guilty of cruelty for the sake of
my conscience. There was Seraphina by my side; it was she who had to
suffer. I had let her enemy go free, because he had happened to be near
me, disarmed. Had I acted like an Englishman and a gentleman, or only
like a fool satisfying his sentiment at other people's expense? Innocent
people, too, like the Riego servants, Castro himself; like Seraphina,
on whom my high-minded forbearance had brought all these dangers, these
hardships, and this uncertain fate.

She gave no sign of having heard Castro's words. The silence of women
is very impenetrable, and it was as if my hold upon the world--since she
was the whole world for me--had been weakened by that shade of decency
of feeling which makes