"Liar!" he cried, "I see the drift of this double-dyed villainy. I am the victim of a plot, so demoniac, that I shudder at the blackness of its treachery. The money has been removed through your agency--removed in order that my name may be branded with a crime. I fear you not, vile schemer; be it yours to tremble, for Heaven looks down upon us, and will defend the innocent." He rushed from the office, and had left the house before Silas recovered from the terror these words had struck to his guilty heart. "Pursue him!" he cried, hoarse with fury; "pursue him, and drag him to prison. Yet, stay, it is too late now to overtake him. I know where to find him--at the Villa Moraquitos." CHAPTER XII. TRISTAN'S SECRET. Tristan, the negro, sat in his little chamber, in that quarter of Don Juan's splendid mansion, which was devoted solely to the slaves. A dark and gloomy shadow rested upon the inky brow of the negro. For some time past the watchful eye of his mother, the old negress, Zarah, had detected her son's unhappiness, but she sought in vain to penetrate the cause. There was much of the savage in the character of this man, and even in his mother he sometimes inspired alarm and suspicion. His was one of those natures, burning as Africa's skies, created, sometimes, like the venomous serpents of those tropical climes, only to terrify and destroy. But he was a privileged being in the house of Don Juan Moraquitos. He had saved the life of the Spaniard's idolized daughter. Yes, only one brief year before the period of which we write, Tristan, the negro, had by his courage and activity, preserved Camillia from a fearful death. Late one evening the young girl and her governess had sat talking together in Camillia's luxurious boudoir. The slave Tristan had been admitted to the apartment to amuse the capricious beauty with his songs and antics. But Camillia had soon grown weary of this diversion and, turning to Mademoiselle Corsi, she said languidly: "Tell Tristan to leave us Pauline, he is noisy, and he wearies me." Generous-hearted as was the Spanish girl, her education had taught her to look upon a slave as an inferior being, unblest with those finer feelings which demand our courtesy and consideration. She dismissed Tristan as she would have dismissed her lapdog when tired of his antics. A black and gloomy frown obscured the negro's glittering eyes as he was thus unceremoniously ordered from the room. It was unobserved by Camillia, but not unmarked by Pauline Corsi. The slave retired, but he did not go far. Between the boudoir and the saloon there was an ante-chamber, the floor of which was covered with a square Persian carpet--a carpet of immense value, thick as velvet pile. Upon this carpet, close to the door of the boudoir, Tristan threw himself like a dog on the threshold of his master's apartment.