presently make
an end, as a child kills a fly on a window-pane--for my pleasure!"

"No," said John d'Albret clearly, lifting his head and looking into the
angry eyes, flashing murkily as the sunlight flashes in the deep water
at a harbour mouth or in some estuary--"no, I will not do any of the
things you ask of me. And the reason is, as you have said, because I
love Claire Agnew until I die. I know not at all whether she loves me or
not. And to me that makes no matter----"

"No, you say right," cried Valentine la Nina, "it will indeed make no
difference. For by these words--they are printed on my heart--you have
condemned her; the spy's daughter to the knife, and yourself----"

"To the fires of the Inquisition?" demanded the Abbe John. "I am ready!"

"Nay, not so fast," said Valentine la Nina, "that were far too easy a
death--too quick. You shall go to the galleys among the lowest
criminals, your feet in the rotting wash of the bilge, lingering out a
slow death-in-life--slow--very slow, the lash on your back and--no,
no--I cannot believe this is your answer. Here, here is yet one chance.
Surely I have not humbled myself only for this?"

The Abbe John answered nothing, and after a pause the girl drew herself
up to her height, and spoke to him through her clenched teeth.

"You shall go to the galleys and pray--ah, you say you have never
learned to pray, but you will--you will on Philip's galleys. They make
good theologians there; they practise. You will pray in vain for the
death that will not come. And I, when I wake in the night, will turn me
and sleep the sweeter on my pillow for the thought of you chained to
your oar, which you will never quit alive. Ah, I will teach you, Jean
d'Albret of the house of Bourbon, cousin of kings, what it is to love
the spy's daughter, and to despise me--me--Valentine la Nina, a daughter
of the King of Spain!"

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE WILD ANIMAL--WOMAN

Mariana the Jesuit rose, pen in hand, to embrace his "niece" as she
entered his bureau. There was a laughing twinkle in his eye, and all his
comfortable little pink-and-white figure shook with mirth.

"Bravo--oh! bravo!" he cried, "never--never did I suppose our little
Valentine half so clever. Why, you turned yonder boastful cockerel
outside in. Ha, they teach us something of dissimulation in our
seminaries, but we are children to you, the best of us--the whole Gesu
might sit at your feet and take lessons. Even Philip him