lips. The mockery of the thing might
have made a worse woman laugh horribly; but this was a woman made pure
by love. She saw no mockery, no discrepancy in what he asked her. She
knew he was in earnest and wished her nothing but good.

And she could see, without knowing that she saw, how much he desired to
be rid of his obligation to her. Therefore, she reasoned, she would be
serving him again if she agreed to what he proposed. Here--if laughing
had been her mood--was matter for laughter, that when he tried to pay
her off he was really getting deeper into debt. Look at it in this
way. You owe a fine sum, principal and interest, to a Jew; you go to
him and propose to borrow again of him in order that you may pay off
the first debt and be done with it. The Jew might laugh but he would
lend; and Manuela, who hoarded love, hugged to her heart the new bond
she was offered. The deeper he went into debt the more she must lend
him! There was pleasure in this--shrill pleasure not far off from
pain; but she was a child of pleasure, and must take what she could get.

Her grave eyes, uncurtained, searched his face. "Is this what you
desire me to do? Is this what you ask of me?"

"My dear," said he, "I desire your freedom. I desire to see you happy
and cared for. I must go away. I must go home. I shall go more
willingly if I know that I have provided for my friend."

She urged a half-hearted plea. "I am very well here, Don Osmundo. The
sisters are kind to me, the work is light. I might be happy here----"

"What!" he cried, "in prison!"

"It is what I deserve," she said; but he would not hear of it.

"You are here through my blunders," he insisted. "If I hadn't left you
with that scoundrel in the wood this would never have happened. And
there's another thing which I must say----" He grew very serious.
"I'm ashamed of myself--but I must say it." She looked at her hands in
her lap, knowing what was coming.

"They said, you know, that Esteban must have thought me your lover."
She sat as still as death. "Well--I was."

Not a word from her. "My dear," he went on painfully--for Eleanor
Vernon's clear grey eyes were on him now, "I must tell you that I did
what I had no business to do. There's a lady in England who--whom--I
was carried away--I thought----" He stopped, truly shocked at what he
had thought her to be. "Now that I know you, Manuela, I tell you
fairly I behaved like a villain."

Her face wa