"Good-bye. By the way, you haven't congratulated me yet."
"Congratulated you?"
"Yes, did I not tell you I am to marry Mr. Benoliel next month?"
And she turned away, and went up the garden slowly.
I asked my people, and they said it was true. Kate, my dear playfellow, was to marry this Spaniard, rich, wilful, accustomed to win, polished in manners and base in life. Why was she to marry him?
"No one knows," said my father, "but her father is talked about in the city, and Benoliel, the Spaniard, is rich. Perhaps that's it."
That was it. She told me so when, after two weeks spent with her and near her, I implored her to break so vile a chain and to come to me, who loved her—whom she loved.
"You are quite right," she said calmly. We were sitting in the window-seat of the oak parlour in her father's desolate old house. "I do love you, and I shall marry Mr. Benoliel."
"Why?"
"Look around you and ask me why, if you can."