"You can have a fine revenge," said Rupert lightly, "and get it easy. One word to your honoured uncle, and all further trouble will be taken from your dainty hands. And I doubt not," he added, with a shrug, "that within the hour all further thought will be chopped from my shoulders."
From behind the shrubs, the secretary could hear the lady shudder.
"I would rather compound the matter with your Highness, if it could be done."
"For myself," said the Prince, "in losing your esteem I lose all that is worth caring about."
"You have not lost it," she cried—"you have not. But what you were asking is a thing impossible. Princes must not marry maidens of rank as low as mine."
"Must not!" quoth Rupert blackly. "Who shall prevent it? I am a strong man, and myself make laws for myself. Who will prevent it?"
"I," she murmured; "because of—how did your Highness word it?—esteem, yes, because of my great and burning esteem for you."
And at that (to the poor secretary's bitter mortification) he took her tightly into his arms, and rained kisses on her upturned face. Again the war of words rose between them, but this timid little doll of a woman could be as firm as the Prince. Marry him she would not; go from Caraccas she would not; betray the Prince (as in his madness he besought) she would not; and yet she demanded one thing of him—a costly enough keepsake. He was to leave as he had come, a poor man in a single ship; he was to forego all pretences to the ransom; and he was to give his word, as a chivalrous gentleman, to jettison all ideas of harrying the place and helping himself to its treasures.
"I am a woman," she sobbed, "that loves your Highness dearly. But I am a Spaniard who loves her country more."
"And I," said he, "can continue to love such a true lady, where I should have lightly forgotten a traitor. Querida," he said, "I know your will about this matter, and I know my own: neither will bend. I shall go away in an empty ship as I came, and never shall I come to seek you here again. But I shall pray to God to bring us together in some other place, and till that day comes I will never call any woman wife."