And, drawing me aside, he said certain words, which I answered, giving him the signs.
“Do you agree?” asked Maya.
“Yes, Lady, since I must, though it pleases me little to open my mind before a stranger. Let us step apart,”—and he walked to the centre of the platform, followed by Maya and myself.
“Lady,” he began, “my business with you is not easy to tell. For many years we were affianced, and both you and your father promised that we should be wed when you returned from this journey——”
“Surely, as things are, cousin, it is needless to discuss the matter of our betrothal,” she broke in with sarcasm.
“Not altogether needless, Lady,” he answered. “I have much to ask your pardon for, yet I make bold to ask it. Maya, you know well that I have loved and love you dearly, and that no other woman has ever been near my heart.”
“Indeed,” she said with a laugh, “these words sound strange in the mouth of the new-made husband of Nahua.”
“Perhaps, Lady, and yet they are true. I am married to Nahua, but I do not love her, though she loves me. It is you whom I love, and when I saw you yesterday all my heart went out to you, so that I almost hated the fair bride at my side.”
“Why, then, did you marry her?”
“Because I must, and because I believed you dead, and your father with you, as did every man in the city. You and Zibalbay being dead, as I thought, was it wonderful that I should wish to keep the place that many were plotting to take from me? This could be done in one way only, by the help of Mattai, the most clever and the most powerful man in the city, and this was Mattai’s price, that his daughter should become the Lady of the Heart. Well, she loved me, she is beautiful, and she has her father’s strength and foresight, so that among all the ladies in the land there was none more fitted to be my wife.”