"If nothing remains to you to conclude our bargain, it shall be broken off this evening!" Andre Certa shrugged his shoulders, took up his money, and went out. "Continue now," said Samuel to the banker; "you may ruin this gentleman after his marriage." The banker bowed submissively. The Jew Samuel was the founder and proprietor of the games of Chorillos. Wherever there was a _real_ to be made this man was to be met with. He followed the mestizo; and finding him on the stone steps, said to him-- "I have secrets of importance to communicate. Where can we converse in safety?" "Wherever you please," replied Certa, roughly. "Senor, let not your passions ruin your prospects. I would neither confide my secret to the most carefully closed chambers, nor the most lonely plains. If you pay me dearly for it, it is because it is worth telling and worth keeping." As they spoke thus, these two men had reached the sea, near the cabins destined for the use of the bathers. They knew not that they were seen, heard and watched by Martin Paz, who glided like a serpent in the shadow. "Let us take a canoe," said Andre, "and go out into the open sea; the sharks may, perhaps, show themselves discreet." Andre detached from the shore a little boat, and threw some money to its guardian. Samuel embarked with him, and the mestizo pushed off. He vigorously plied two flexible oars, which soon took them a mile from the shore. But as he saw the canoe put off, Martin Paz, concealed in a crevice of the rock, hastily undressed, and precipitating himself into the sea, swam vigorously toward the boat. The sun had just buried his last rays in the waves of the ocean, and darkness hovered over the crests of the waves. Martin Paz had not once reflected that sharks of the most dangerous species frequented these fatal shores. He stopped not far from the boat of the mestizo, and listened. "_But what proof of the identity of the daughter shall I carry to the father?_" asked Andre Certa of the Jew. "You will recall to him the circumstances under which he lost her." "What were these circumstances?" Martin Paz, now scarcely above the waves, listened without understanding. In a girdle attached to his body, he had a poignard; he waited. "Her father," said the Jew, "lived at Concencion, in Chili: he was then the great nobleman he is now; only his fortune equalled his nobility. Obliged to come to Lima on business, he set out alone, leaving at Concencion his wife, and child aged fifteen months. The climate of Peru agreed with him, and he sent for the marchioness to rejoin him. She embarked on the _San-Jose_ of Valparaiso, with her confidential servants.