"Yes; you have not one friend in this house, save her who now speaks to you. Camillia loves you, you will answer! Yes; but with the feeble passion of a capricious beauty, which may change with to-morrow's sun. How long, think you, will her love endure when she hears every creature in New Orleans brand you as a thief and ingrate? Will it outlast the hour when she sees you placed in a criminal dock, side by side, with the lowest thief in the city? Will it survive degradation and shame? No; Camillia Moraquitos is proud, and from the hour that you leave this house with the clanking fetters on your wrists, she will despise and hate you--hate you for the very memory of her past love." Paul Lisimon knew the pride which formed the leading principle in Camillia's character, and he felt that there might be truth in these bitter words. "Oh, Heaven," he cried, "this is indeed terrible!" "Hear me, Paul. It is in my power to save you from these fetters and this shame. It is in my power to bring Silas Craig and his haughty employer, Don Juan Moraquitos, groveling to your feet to implore you for mercy--to entreat your forbearance to save them from the fate of a felon." "You are mad!" exclaimed Paul. "What in mercy's name mean you by these words?" "Listen to me, Paul Lisimon, for these few minutes, bought from the vigilance of the officer without yonder door, must decide the fate of both of us. Thirteen years ago, Don Tomaso Crivelli expired in the arms of his brother-in-law, in an apartment at the end of the gallery outside this door. You have often been in that room." "I have. It is sacred to me, for it was there my earliest friend breathed his last sigh." "That chamber is hung with Indian embroidery of shells and feathers upon leather. These hangings are about two feet from the wall, leaving an aperture behind large enough to admit of a slender person's hiding behind the embroidery. On the night of your benefactor's death I was concealed behind these hangings." "You, a spy? But for what reason?" "Don't doubt that I had my reason--reasons which at some future time I will reveal. When I carried the child Camillia to her uncle's bedside I heard a few words dropped which excited my curiosity; to gratify that curiosity I concealed myself at eleven o'clock that night behind the hangings of the dying man's bed-chamber. There I heard Tomaso Crivelli dictate his last will and testament to the lawyer, Silas Craig, in the presence of your father. The signature to that will was afterward witnessed by two persons, one a creature of the attorney's, the other a dependent of Don Juan Moraquitos." "But what has all this to do with me?" asked Paul. "It might have much to do with you. That night I learned a secret--" "A secret!" "Yes; and one by the aid of which I can save you from shame and humiliation, and elevate you to the proudest position even your haughty spirit could devise." "You can do all this?" "I can." "And you will?" "On one condition."