"Yes, dead! We Spaniards brook no dishonour, we never allow a wrong to pass unavenged. She showed him the evidence of his falsehood in one hand, and with the other she shot him dead upon his own verandah. She was tried and instantly acquitted, and, in consideration of the wrong she had suffered, a law was made constituting her legally his wife, and making us children legitimate. But the disgrace was to her--a high-minded, noble woman--too much; she fell ill and died. Then the old man, Cundall, seeing that it was his friend's evil-doing that had led to our being orphans, said that henceforth we should be his care. So we grew up, and I had learnt to look upon myself and my sister as his heirs, when one day there came another who, it was easy to see, had supplanted us. It was the English lad, Walter Cundall." "I begin to see," Penlyn said. "At first," Señor Guffanta went on, "I hated him for spoiling our chances, but at last I could hate him no longer. Gradually, his gentle disposition, his way of interceding for me with his uncle, when I had erred, above all his tenderness to my poor sister, who was sick and deformed, won my love. Had he been my brother I could not have loved him more. Then--then, as years went on, I committed a fault, and the old man cast me off for ever. Another man tried to take from me the woman I loved--she was a vile thing worth no man's love; but--no matter how--I avenged myself. But from that day the old man turned against me, and would neither see nor hear of me again. "A year or two passed and then I heard from Walter, for my sister and I had left Los Torros (the town where we had all lived) and had gone elsewhere, that the old man was dead. 'He has left everything to me,' Walter wrote, 'and there is no mention of you nor Juanna, but be assured neither of you shall ever want for anything.'" "Stop," Lord Penlyn said, "you need tell me no more. I know the rest." "You know the rest?" Señor Guffanta said, looking fixedly at him, "You know the rest?" "Yes. You are _Corot_." A bewildered look came over the Spaniard's face, and then, after a second's pause, he said: "Yes. I am _Corot_. It was the name given me by the Mestizos amongst whom I played as a boy, and it kept to me. It is you, then, Lord Penlyn, who has set this Dobson to look for me?" "Yes; we found your letters to him, and from one of them we believed you to be in England. We thought that--that----" "That I killed him?" "You threatened him in one of your letters. We were justified in thinking so." "He, at least, did not think so. Read this." He took from his pocket a letter written by Walter Cundall during the few days he had been back in England, and gave it to Penlyn. It ran: "_June_, 188--. "MY DEAR COROT,