r own way. If you keess me and zay before God you marry me, I
take you back to Casa 47--if not, Madame Steele go alone to _San
Miguel_."

[Illustration: "YOU MUST TAKE ME BACK!"--_Page 210_]

"Baron de Bach, you're talking crazy nonsense. You don't frighten
me, but you _do_ disgust me. You think to get some Peruvian amusement
out of frightening a woman; well, you had better go to a bull-fight. I
detest you! Let me go or I'll cry out!"

He puts one hand over my mouth and holds me as in a vise.

"Dthank you, Blanca! You gif me courage. I haf tell you how a Peruvian
loaf; I vill tell you how he plan. In dthe bay off Panama ees my
yacht. I vill keep you in Guatemala vhile I send for her, and dthen ve
go to Peru, to Ceylon--anyvhere you like but America. I write Madame
Steele you air my vife, and she vill soon zee ve air not to be find;
she vill go back to New York. It ees no use dthat you cry out, no von
hear, or if von do, you spik no Spanish, and I haf my pistol if any
interfere. I tell you so much dthat you make no meestake. Ve air not
far from dthe house of two old friends of me. Dthey vill take care off
you, till my yacht come; you need not fear me, Senorita." He loosens
his grasp for an instant, and the dark street seems to whirl. I would
have fallen if he had not caught me. I hear, as one dreaming, the
caressing words of Spanish--I scarcely feel the hot kisses.

"I'm all alone," I think, looking down the silent street to a far-off
lamp, and then up to the brilliant sky, but even that seems strange,
for instead of my old friends in heaven, the Southern Cross shines
cold and far above me.

"Guillermo," I say, steadying myself against his arm, "you would make
a terrible mistake. You don't understand Northern women. You say you
love me, and in the next breath you plan to ruin my whole life. I
would make you more misery than ever a man endured, and I should hate
you bitterly and without end."

"It ees no use dthat you zay such dthings."

"Guillermo, don't let your love be such a curse to me."

"A curse----"

"Yes. If any other man had roughly treated me, had abused my
confidence, and, finding me defenceless, had forgotten what all brave
men owe to women--what would you do to such a man?"

The Peruvian puts his hand before his eyes.

"I listen not to anydthing you zay."

"Yes, you will. You know you would half kill the man who would strike
a woman. Some half-mad man has done worse than strike me, Guillermo,