, at this moment you know what
it is to fear, and are tasting of its agony. Now I will be open with
you; Thomas Wingfield, I fear you. When first I saw you I feared you as
I had reason to do, and that is why I tried to kill you, and as time has
gone by I have feared you more and more, so much indeed, that at times
I cannot rest because of a nameless terror that dogs me and which has
to do with you. Because of you I fled from Spain, because of you I have
played the coward in more frays than one. The luck has always been mine
in this duel between us, and yet I tell you that even as you are, I
fear you still. If I dared I would kill you at once, only then you would
haunt me as your mother haunts me, and also I must answer for it to
Cortes. Fear, Cousin Wingfield, is the father of cruelty, and mine makes
me cruel to you. Living or dead, I know that you will triumph over me
at the last, but it is my turn now, and while you breathe, or while one
breathes who is dear to you, I will spend my life to bring you and them
to shame and misery and death, as I brought your mother, my cousin,
though she forced me to it to save myself. Why not? There is no
forgiveness for me, I cannot undo the past. You came to take vengeance
on me, and soon or late by you, or through you, it will be glutted, but
till then I triumph, ay, even when I must sink to this butcher's work to
do it,' and suddenly he turned and left the place.

Then weakness and suffering overcame me and I swooned away. When I awoke
it was to find that my bonds had been loosed and that I lay on some sort
of bed, while a woman bent over me, tending me with murmured words of
pity and love. The night had fallen, but there was light in the chamber,
and by it I saw that the woman was none other than Otomie, no longer
starved and wretched, but almost as lovely as before the days of siege
and hunger.

'Otomie! you here!' I gasped through my wounded lips, for with my senses
came the memory of de Garcia's threats.

'Yes, beloved, it is I,' she murmured; 'they have suffered that I nurse
you, devils though they are. Oh! that I must see you thus and yet be
helpless to avenge you,' and she burst into weeping.

'Hush,' I said, 'hush. Have we food?'

'In plenty. A woman brought it from Marina.'

'Give me to eat, Otomie.'

Now for a while she fed me and the deadly sickness passed from me,
though my poor flesh burned with a hundred agonies.

'Listen, Otomie: have you seen de Garcia?'