"If you are a gentleman and a man of honour, and not a coward, you will find only one answer to my question," he said, his rage deepening in its quiet intensity with every sentence, till each word he uttered was a deliberate insult—an added knot on the lash of his bitter tongue. But I had my temper too well in hand to take fire. "There are matters you forget. You set your bully, Livenza, upon me first; you used your power as Minister to destroy me; you ordered your police spies to dog me; and you had me gaoled in one of your filthy prisons. In this way you exhausted every means in your power to deal with me officially; and having schemed and tricked and bullied thus in vain, you find yourself at bay, and as a last resource you remember your honour with suspicious tardiness, and think of the means which the gentleman and the man of honour you speak of would have thought of first. I will not fight with you, Senor Quesada." "You are a coward, then." "I don’t accept your standards in that matter." "I will make you fight me," he cried; and, his rage breaking beyond all control, he rushed at me, and raised his arm to strike me with the back of the hand across the mouth; but I caught his arm, and thrust him staggering back against his chair, over which he nearly fell. Thinking he might have firearms, and that in his mad fury he would use them, I unlocked the door, and was leaving the room when he called to me; but I paid no heed, and went out. Dolores was in waiting, and came when she heard me leaving. She was paler even than before, like one distraught with fear and anxiety. I pitied her from the bottom of my heart, and her brother’s blunt statement that she loved me, and had been led by that love to insist on my freedom even at the cost of ruin to him, touched me very closely. "Is there any hope of an arrangement, senor?" she asked, searching my face with haggard eyes. "None whatever," I replied, shaking my head. "Can nothing bring you two together again?" "It is absolutely impossible, senorita." I spoke as gently as I could, but it was useless to flinch from the truth. "Can I do nothing to prevail with you? I have tried so hard to serve you," she said, in a tone of despairing wistfulness. "For you, personally, I would do anything in my power. I am not unmindful of what it must have cost you, and you shall not find me ungrateful." "I do not ask for thanks; I do not want them. I should have done the same had the ruin been mine instead of Sebastian’s," and she smiled. "I am glad to have done it;" but the smile ended in a sigh at the thought of the price to be paid. I took her hands and pressed them. "I am very troubled for you," I murmured. She returned the pressure, her own hands trembling very much.