"Sit where I can see your face," said Gonsalvo; "I will not shrink even from that. Don Juan, I am your brother's murderer."
Juan started, and his colour changed rapidly.
"If I did not think you were mad--"
"I am no more mad than you are," Gonsalvo interrupted. "I was mad, indeed; but that horrible night, when God smote my body, I regained my reason. I see all things clearly now--too late."
"Am I to understand, then," said Juan, rising from his seat, and speaking in measured tones, though his eye was like a tiger's--"am I to understand that you--you--denounced my brother? If so, thank God that you are lying helpless there."
"I am not quite so vile a thing as that. I did not intend to harm a hair of his head; but I detained him here to his ruin. He had the means of escape provided, and but for me would have been in safety ere the Alguazils came."
"Well for both of us your guilt was not greater. Still, you cannot expect me--just yet--to forgive you."
"I expect no forgiveness from man," said Gonsalvo, who perhaps disdained to plead in his own exculpation the generous words of Carlos.
Juan had by this time changed his tone towards his cousin, and assumed his perfect sanity; though, engrossed by the thought of his brother, he was quite unconscious of the mental process by which he had arrived at this conclusion. He asked,--
"But why did you detain him? How did you come to know at all of his intended flight?"