"No, I will stay with you."
He caught her hands, and looked down into the dark eyes, so wondrously upturned to his.
"You must come by the fire, and get warm.... Here, sit in this chair. You have been frightened to death, prowling through this horrid place.... Your hands are icy.... There, there! Go on and cry—forget that you're a Princess and be a real girl. Cry all you want! That's fine!"
He took off his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders as she sat by the flaming remnants of the old table.
He turned about and beckoned to Rusty, who with a revolver in hand, his courage restored in a way by the turn of events, disappeared from view. Jarvis gently placed a hand upon the heaving shoulder.
"I'll round up this spook to-night for good and all. Then the vassal's task is done. His fate is in your hands, Highness; what's to become of him?... Don't send me away. I loved you from the first—not like a vassal either—and will always love you.
"I know I'm just a plain American citizen ... and a man. All the man in me cries out, 'I love you!' Don't send me away."
"You must go. You must leave Spain, for your life would never be safe here: you know what feuds are, and you have started one."
Just then an audible, unmistakable, common-place sneeze interrupted this most wonderful of all conversations.
Jarvis looked about. The sneeze was in the room.