"I have no doubt on that point, sir; more especially hurried to leave this house—is it not so?"
"What do you mean, sir?" the stranger asked, haughtily.
"I mean," the adventurer replied, as he rose and placed himself between the stranger and the door, "that it is useless to feign any longer, and that you are recognized."
"I recognized? I do not understand you. What does this language mean?"
"It means," Montbarts said brutally, "that you are a spy and a traitor, and that you will be hanged within ten minutes."
"I?" the stranger replied, with very cleverly assumed surprise; "Why, you must be mad, sir, or suffering under a strange mistake. Let me pass, I request."
"I am not mad or mistaken, Señor Don Antonio de la Ronda."
The stranger started, a livid pallor covered his face, but he immediately recovered himself.
"Why, this is madness!" he said.
"Sir," Montbarts remarked, still calm, but remaining in front of the door, "when I affirm, you deny. It is evident that one of us lies, or is mistaken. Now I declare that it is not I, hence it must be you; and to remove your last doubts on this point, listen to this, but first be good enough to resume your seat. We shall have, however much it may annoy you, to converse for some time and I will remark, that it is a very bad taste to talk standing face to face like two gamecocks ready to fly at each other's combs, when it is possible to act otherwise."