, sir, for God's sake----"

"Press your daughter no further, Don Alvaro, she is beside herself,"
gasped out Alvarado hoarsely. "'Tis all my fault. I loved her so deeply
that she caught the feeling in her own heart. When I am gone she will
forget me. You have raised me from obscurity, you have loaded me with
honor, you have given me every opportunity--I will be true. I will be
faithful to you. 'Twill be death, but I hope it may come quickly.
Misjudge me not, sweet lady. Happiness smiles not upon my passion,
sadness marks me for her own. I pray God 'twill be but for a little
space. Give me some work to do that I may kill sorrow by losing my life,
my lord. And thou, Donna Mercedes, forget me and be happy with Don
Felipe."

"Never, never!" cried the girl.

She rose to her feet and came nearer to him. Her father stood by as if
stunned. She laid her arms around Alvarado's neck. She looked into her
lover's eyes.

"You love me and I love you. What matters anything else?"

"Oh, my lord, my lord!" cried Alvarado, staring at the Viceroy, "kill
me, I pray, and end it all!"

"Thou must first kill me," cried Mercedes, extending her arms across her
lover's breast.

"Donna Mercedes," said her father, "thou hast put such shame upon the
name and fame of de Lara as it hath never borne in five hundred years.
Thou hast been betrothed to an honorable gentleman. It is my will that
the compact be carried out."

"O my God! my God!" cried the unhappy girl, sinking into a chair. "Wilt
Thou permit such things to be?"

"And, Alvarado," went on the old man, not heeding his daughter's piteous
prayer. "I know not thy parentage nor to what station thou wert born,
but I have marked you from that day when, after Panama, they brought you
a baby into my house. I have watched you with pride and joy. Whatever
responsibility I have placed before you, you have met it. Whatever
demand that hard circumstances have made upon you, you have overcome it.
For every test there counts a victory. You have done the State and me
great service, none greater than to-night. With such a temptation before
thee, that few men that I have come in contact with in my long life
could have resisted, you have thrown it aside. You and your honor have
been tried and not found wanting. Whatever you may have been I know you
now to be the finest thing on God's earth, a Spanish gentleman! Nay,
with such evidence of your character I could, were it possible, have set
aside the cla