rom a child I loved her only in the world, as I love her to
this hour, but she hated me because I was wicked and feared me because I
was cruel. Then she saw your father and loved him, and brought about his
escape from the Holy Office, whither I had delivered him to be tortured
and burnt, and fled with him to England. I was jealous and would have
been revenged if I might, but there was no way. I led an evil life, and
when nearly twenty years had gone by, chance took me to England on a
trading journey. By chance I learned that your father and mother lived
near Yarmouth, and I determined to see her, though at that time I had no
thought of killing her. Fortune favoured me, and we met in the woodland,
and I saw that she was still beautiful and knew that I loved her more
than ever before. I gave her choice to fly with me or to die, and after
a while she died. But as she shrank up the wooded hillside before my
sword, of a sudden she stood still and said:

'"Listen before you smite, Juan. I have a death vision. As I have fled
from you, so shall you fly before one of my blood in a place of fire and
rock and snow, and as you drive me to the gates of heaven, so he shall
drive you into the mouth of hell."'

'In such a place as this, cousin,' I said.

'In such a place as this,' he whispered, glancing round.

'Continue.'

Again he strove to be silent, but again my will mastered him and he
spoke.

'It was too late to spare her if I wished to escape myself, so I killed
her and fled. But terror entered my heart, terror which has never left
it to this hour, for always before my eyes was the vision of him of
your mother's blood, before whom I should fly as she fled before me, who
shall drive me into the mouth of hell.'

'That must be yonder, cousin,' I said, pointing with the sword toward
the pit of the crater.

'It is yonder; I have looked.'

'But only for the body, cousin, not for the spirit.'

'Only for the body, not for the spirit,' he repeated after me.

'Continue,' I said.

'Afterwards on that same day I met you, Thomas Wingfield. Already your
dead mother's prophecy had taken hold of me, and seeing one of her blood
I strove to kill him lest he should kill me.'

'As he will do presently, cousin.'

'As he will do presently,' he repeated like a talking bird.

'You know what happened and how I escaped. I fled to Spain and strove
to forget. But I could not. One night I saw a face in the streets of
Seville that reminded