"I thank you, Don Pedro," I said, and fought down the cry of joy that struggled to my lips. Then, because I could find no other words, and feared to fail in the part I had to play, I took Dame Barbara's scissors and cut off a long lock of my yellow hair, bound it with riband, and threw it down to him as guerdon for the favour he had granted me. This noon, when I joined the Governor's wife as usual under the vine-hung balcony, I boasted cheerfully of the promise I had wrung from Melinza; and she demanded at once to hear all that had passed between us,--then called me a fool for my pains! "Little marplot! Had you shown less concern for the fate of your Englishman, it would have been vastly better. You do but cast obstacles in my way. There is nothing for me to do now but hotly to oppose his leaving! If needs must I will pretend a liking for the man myself, and vow to hold him as my guest yet a while longer, for the sake of his pretty wit and his gallant bearing,--any device to throw dust in their eyes, so that we seem not to be of the same minds and putting up the selfsame plea. Oh! little saint with the blue eyes, your _metier_ is not diplomacy!" "In sooth, senora, till you first taught me to dissemble I was unlessoned in the art." She laughed then, and said that when I had less faith in others I could more easily deceive. "If the little Margarita believed Melinza's pretty fable about Habana, and the excellent company there which his _wife_ would enjoy, 'tis no wonder that she made a tangle of her own little web." "But Dona Orosia, think you he would deal unfairly with me? His words rang so true--even a bad man may love honestly! And if I trifle with the one saving virtue in his heart, will it not be a grievous sin?" The mocking smile died out of the Spaniard's eyes and left them fathomless and sombre. I felt as one who--looking into an open window, and seeing the light of a taper glancing and flickering within--draws back abashed, when suddenly the flame is quenched, and only the hollow dark stares back at his blinded gaze. "If he loves you," she said slowly, "it is but as he has loved before, more times than one. He would skim the cream of passion, brush the dew from the flower, crush the first sweetness from the myrtle-blooms,--and leave the rest. You child, what do you know of men? It is only the unattainable that is worth striving for. There is much of the brute beast in their passions. Did you mark, the other day, how the dead hound turned a scornful nozzle to the first sweet morsel that I pressed on his acceptance? But afterward, the fear of losing it made him eager to the leaping-point. Just so I shall trick his master--shall let him see thee, _almost_ grasp and taste; then, when the moment of mad longing comes, I'll stab him with the final loss of thee! Only so can I arouse a desire that will outlive a day; for I know men's hearts to the core, thou blue-eyed babe!"