with
a ready ear, for I had a fellow-feeling with them. Indeed so deep and
earnest was my sympathy that more than once I found the unhappy fair
ready to transfer their affections to my unworthy self, and in fact once
things came about so that, had I willed it, I could have married one of
the loveliest and wealthiest noble ladies of Seville.

But I would none of it, who thought of my English Lily by day and night.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SECOND MEETING

It may be thought that while I was employed thus I had forgotten the
object of my coming to Spain, namely to avenge my mother's murder on the
person of Juan de Garcia. But this was not so. So soon as I was settled
in the house of Andres de Fonseca I set myself to make inquiries as to
de Garcia's whereabouts with all possible diligence, but without result.

Indeed, when I came to consider the matter coolly it seemed that I had
but a slender chance of finding him in this city. He had, indeed, given
it out in Yarmouth that he was bound for Seville, but no ship bearing
the same name as his had put in at Cadiz or sailed up the Guadalquivir,
nor was it likely, having committed murder in England, that he would
speak the truth as to his destination. Still I searched on. The house
where my mother and grandmother had lived was burned down, and as their
mode of life had been retired, after more than twenty years of change
few even remembered their existence. Indeed I only discovered one, an
old woman whom I found living in extreme poverty, and who once had been
my grandmother's servant and knew my mother well, although she was not
in the house at the time of her flight to England. From this woman I
gathered some information, though, needless to say, I did not tell her
that I was the grandson of her old mistress.

It seemed that after my mother fled to England with my father, de Garcia
persecuted my grandmother and his aunt with lawsuits and by other means,
till at last she was reduced to beggary, in which condition the villain
left her to die. So poor was she indeed, that she was buried in a public
grave. After that the old woman, my informant, said she had heard that
de Garcia had committed some crime and been forced to flee the country.
What the crime was she could not remember, but it had happened about
fifteen years ago.

All this I learned when I had been about three months in Seville, and
though it was of interest it did not advance me in my search.

Some four or fiv