my
living as I best might, for I feared to return to England as a runaway.
Still I made a living and not a bad one, now in this way and now in
that, but though I am ashamed to say it, mostly by gaming, at which I
had great luck. One night I met this man Juan de Garcia--for in his hate
he gave you his true name when he would have stabbed you--at play. Even
then he had an evil fame, though he was scarcely more than a lad, but he
was handsome in person, set high in birth, and of a pleasing manner. It
chanced that he won of me at the dice, and being in a good humour, he
took me to visit at the house of his aunt, his uncle's widow, a lady of
Seville. This aunt had one child, a daughter, and that daughter was your
mother. Now your mother, Luisa de Garcia, was affianced to her cousin
Juan de Garcia, not with her own will indeed, for the contract had been
signed when she was only eight years old. Still it was binding, more
binding indeed than in this country, being a marriage in all except
in fact. But those women who are thus bound for the most part bear no
wife's love in their hearts, and so it was with your mother. Indeed she
both hated and feared her cousin Juan, though I think that he loved
her more than anything on earth, and by one pretext and another she
contrived to bring him to an agreement that no marriage should be
celebrated till she was full twenty years of age. But the colder she
was to him, the more was he inflamed with desire to win her and also
her possessions, which were not small, for like all Spaniards he was
passionate, and like most gamesters and men of evil life, much in want
of money.

'Now to be brief, from the first moment that your mother and I set eyes
on each other we loved one another, and it was our one desire to meet
as often as might be; and in this we had no great difficulty, for her
mother also feared and hated Juan de Garcia, her nephew by marriage, and
would have seen her daughter clear of him if possible. The end of it was
that I told my love, and a plot was made between us that we should fly
to England. But all this had not escaped the ears of Juan, who had spies
in the household, and was jealous and revengeful as only a Spaniard can
be. First he tried to be rid of me by challenging me to a duel, but we
were parted before we could draw swords. Then he hired bravos to murder
me as I walked the streets at night, but I wore a chain shirt beneath my
doublet and their daggers broke upon it, an