ion tells us that it is a woman's crown,
yet how heavy a one at times! I closed the door, I locked it; I caused
to draw down the heavy Persians. Then, tiger-like, I sprang upon my
attendant, and laid my hand on her mouth. "Hush!" I tell her. "Not a
word, not a sound! dare but breathe, and you may be my death. My life,
I tell you, hangs by a thread. Hush! be silent, and tell me all. Tell me
who assists Geronimo in the stables since Pablo is ill." Manuela
struggles, she releases herself to reply--

"Pasquale!"

It is the answer from heaven. Pasquale, I have said, is my one friend
beside Manuela. I say to her, "Do thus, and thus! give these orders to
Pasquale; tell him that it imports of your life and mine, saying nothing
of his own; that if I am not obeyed, the evil eye will be the least of
his punishments, and death without the sacraments the end for him."

Manuela hears; she trembles; she flies to execute my commands. Then,
Marguerite--then, what does the daughter of Cuba do? She goes to the
wall, to the trophy I have described to you so often. She selects her
weapons. Ah, if you could see them! First, a long slender dagger, the
steel exquisitely inlaid with gold, in a sheath of green enamel; a
dagger for a prince, Marguerite, for your Lancelot or Tristram!
Another, short and keen, the blade plain but deadly, cased in wrought
leather of Cordova. Last, my machete, my pearl of destructiveness. It
was his, my Santayana's; he procured it from Toledo, from the master
sword-maker of the universe. The blade is so fine, the eye refuses to
tell where it melts into the air; a touch, and the hardest substance is
divided exactly in two pieces. The handle, gold, set with an ancestral
emerald, which for centuries has brought victory in the field to the arm
of the hero who wore it; the sheath--I forget myself; this weapon has no
sheath. When a Santillo de Santayana rides into battle, he has no
thought to sheathe his sword. These, Marguerite, are my armament; these,
and a tiny gold-mounted revolver, a gem, a toy, but a toy of deadly
purpose. Enough! I lay them apart, ready for the night. I go to my
stepmother, I smile, I make submission. I will do all she wishes; I am
a child; her age impresses me with the truth that I should not set my
will against hers. Concepcion is thirty on her next birthday; she tells
the world that she is twenty, but I know! it grinds her bones when I
remind her of her years, as they were revealed to me by a m