"Perhaps." Cueto shrugged. "That is what I want to talk to you about, if only you will be sensible. Now then, let us be frank. Inasmuch as we're both in much the same fix, hadn't we better continue our present arrangements?" He stared unblinkingly at his listener. "Oh, I mean it! Is it not better for you to be content with what my generosity prompts me to give, rather than to risk ruin for both of us by grasping for too much?" "Merciful God! The outrage! I warrant you have grown rich through your stealing." Isabel's voice had gone flat with consternation. "Rich? Well, not exactly, but comfortably well off." Cueto actually smiled again. "No doubt my frankness is a shock to you. You are angry at my proposition, eh? Never mind. You will think better of it in time, if you are a sensible woman." "What a fiend! Have you no sentiment?" "Oh, senora! I am all sentiment. Don Esteban was my benefactor. I revere his memory, and I feel it my duty to see that his family does not want. That is why I have provided for you, and will continue to provide--in proper measure. But now, since at last we enjoy such confidential relations, let us have no more of these miserable suspicions of each other. Let us entirely forget this unpleasant misunderstanding and be the same good friends as before." Having said this, Pancho Cueto stood silent a moment in polite expectancy; then receiving no intelligible reply, he bowed low and left the room. To the avaricious Dona Isabel Cueto's frank acknowledgment of theft was maddening, and the realization that she was helpless, nay, dependent upon his charity for her living, fairly crucified her proud spirit. All day she brooded, and by the time evening came she had worked herself into such a state of nerves that she could eat no dinner. Locking herself into her room, she paced the floor, now wringing her hands, now twisting in agony upon her bed, now biting her wrists in an endeavor to clear her head and to devise some means of outwitting this treacherous overseer. But mere thought of the law frightened her; the longer she pondered her situation the more she realized her own impotence. There was no doubt that the courts were corrupt: they were notoriously venal at best, and this war had made them worse. Graft was rampant everywhere. To confess publicly that Esteban Varona had left no deeds, no title to his property, would indeed be the sheerest folly. No, Cueto had her at his mercy. Sometime during the course of the evening a wild idea came to Isabel. Knowing that the manager would spend the night beneath her roof, she planned to kill him. At first it seemed a simple thing to do--merely a matter of a dagger or a pistol, while he slept--but further thought revealed appalling risks and difficulties, and she decided to wait. Poison was far safer.