"Never, never!" cried the girl.
She rose to her feet and came nearer to him. Her father stood by as if stunned. She laid her arms around Alvarado's neck. She looked into her lover's eyes.
"You love me and I love you. What matters anything else?"
"Oh, my lord, my lord!" cried Alvarado, staring at the Viceroy, "kill me, I pray, and end it all!"
"Thou must first kill me," cried Mercedes, extending her arms across her lover's breast.
"Donna Mercedes," said her father, "thou hast put such shame upon the name and fame of de Lara as it hath never borne in five hundred years. Thou hast been betrothed to an honorable gentleman. It is my will that the compact be carried out."
"O my God! my God!" cried the unhappy girl, sinking into a chair. "Wilt Thou permit such things to be?"
"And, Alvarado," went on the old man, not heeding his daughter's piteous prayer. "I know not thy parentage nor to what station thou wert born, but I have marked you from that day when, after Panama, they brought you a baby into my house. I have watched you with pride and joy. Whatever responsibility I have placed before you, you have met it. Whatever demand that hard circumstances have made upon you, you have overcome it. For every test there counts a victory. You have done the State and me great service, none greater than to-night. With such a temptation before thee, that few men that I have come in contact with in my long life could have resisted, you have thrown it aside. You and your honor have been tried and not found wanting. Whatever you may have been I know you now to be the finest thing on God's earth, a Spanish gentleman! Nay, with such evidence of your character I could, were it possible, have set aside the claims of birth and station——"
"Oh, my father, my father!" interrupted the girl joyously.
"And have given you Donna Mercedes to wife."