"One night, at the head of a band of pirates and Apaches, my two friends and myself, after assuring ourselves that all were quietly sleeping in Don Pacheco's hacienda, glided like serpents through the darkness; the walls were escaladed, and our vengeance began. The hacienda was given up to the flames; Don Pacheco and his wife, surprised in their sleep, were pitilessly massacred, after undergoing atrocious tortures. I tore both yourself and your sister from the arms of your dying mother, who sobbed at our feet, imploring me to spare you in memory of my old love for her.
"I swore it, and kept my promise. I do not know what became of your sister; I did not even trouble myself about her. As for you, Niña, have you had ever any cause to reproach me?"
The girl had listened to this fearful revelation with frowning eyebrows and livid cheeks. When the bandit stopped, she said harshly:
"Then you are the murderer of my father and mother?"
"Yes," he replied, "but not alone; there were three of us, and we took our revenge."
"Wretch!" she burst forth; "Vile assassin!"
The girl uttered these words with such an implacable accent, that the bandit shuddered.
"Ah!" he said, "I recognise the lioness. You are truly my enemy's daughter. Courage, child, courage. Assassinate me in your turn. What restrains you? Rob me of the short span of life still left me, but make haste, or Heaven will prevent your vengeance."
And he fixed on her his eye, which was still proud, but already clouded by the hand of death. The girl gave no answer.
"You prefer seeing me die; well, receive this last present," he said, plucking from his bosom a bag, suspended from a steel chain; "in it you will find two letters, one from your father, the other from your mother; you will learn who you are, and what name you should bear in the world, for the one I mentioned is false; I wished to deceive you to the end. That name is my last vengeance.... Niña, you will remember me."