"I will tell you what I think you do not know. I am in no real danger, for I am all but pledged to marry—Sebastian Quesada!" Her firmness scarcely lasted to the end of the sentence, and she uttered the last words as if looking for some expostulation from me; but I made none. Instead, I laughed and shook my head. I would not take it seriously. "There is much virtue in that ’all but.’" She seemed surprised and in a sense disappointed at my reception of the news. "It is true. I have three days left to give my answer. He gave me a week." "He might as well have given you an hour—or a year. It’s all the same. It will never be more than ’all but.’ There are those who will never allow it." "Allow?" she cried with a start, the glance of surprise ending in a smile. "For one thing your family would bring pressure upon you," I answered, gravely. "Family, again," and the smile deepened, and then died away, as she added, "But do you know what the marriage would mean to me?" "I know what it would mean to Quesada. He would never live to lead you to the altar, Sarita." "You would not do anything so mad?" "I am not the only man in Madrid who would stop such a marriage. You have sown passion, the harvest may be death." For a moment she looked troubled, then her face cleared and grew very serious. "You mean Juan Livenza. Yes, he is dangerous; but he is only a man; and after all Sebastian Quesada’s man." "Is Quesada more than a man, and proof against revenge?" "I cannot tell you all there is in this; nor all that the marriage would mean to me." This perplexed me. Her face was almost stern as she spoke, and after a moment’s pause, she exclaimed with a gesture of impatience and irresolution: "Don’t question me. It must be." "You have seen Quesada while I have been away." It was really a question, but I said it as though stating a fact. "I told you he had given me a week for my reply." "And you would marry him—loving another?" The colour that rushed to her cheeks was as much a flush of pain as of surprise. For an instant her burning eyes met mine in indignant protest and repudiation, but they fell before my steady gaze. I think she read the resolve that ruled me now, and feared it. "You have no right to speak like this to me," she said; but there was neither life nor force in her words, and her voice faltered. "On the contrary, I have the best of all rights. And you know this." She made an effort to assert herself then. Drawing herself up, she met my gaze steadily, and said in a tone she sought to make indignant: "What right do you mean?" For the space of a dozen quickened heart-beats we faced each other thus, and then I said, in a tone that thrilled with the passion in me: "I love you, and I am the man you love, Sarita, and by the God that made us both, I swear no other man shall call you wife."