“You have spoken, cousin,” she answered, “and your words have been gentle; yet, if I understand you right, some few days since you were in doubt as to whether it would not be better to murder me here in this darksome hole where you have placed us.”
“If policy put any such thought into my mind, Maya, love drove it out again,” he answered, with confusion.
“So you admit that this was so,” she said. “Well, a day may come when policy might breed the thought, and love, grown weary, prove not warm enough to wither it. Also it seems that even now you threaten these my companions with death, should I refuse you your desire.”
“If you should refuse me my desire, Maya, perhaps it will be for a secret reason of your own,”—and he scowled at the señor angrily,—“a reason that the death of these men, or of one of them, will remove.”
“Be sure of one thing, Tikal,” she broke in sharply, “that such a wicked deed would put an end for ever to your hopes of making me your wife. Now, listen. I have heard your words, and they have touched me somewhat, for I think that although you have broken your oath to my father, and your troth with me, at heart you are honest in your love. Still, I can give you no answer now, and for this reason, that the answer does not lie with me, but rather with the gods. To-morrow night we appear before the high Court of the Council of the Heart, and you yourself shall set the severed portions of the talisman that we have travelled so far to seek in the place prepared to receive it, in the symbol that is on the altar of the Sanctuary. Then, as my dead father believed,—and he was gifted with wisdom from above,—the god shall declare his purpose in this way or in that, showing his servants why all these things have come about, and what they must do to fulfil his will. By that will, cousin, and not by my own, I shall be guided in this and in all other things.”
Now, Tikal thought awhile, and answered:
“And if nothing follows this ceremony, and the oracles of the god are silent, what then?”
“Then, Tikal,” she said softly, “you may ask me again if I will become your wife, and perhaps, if the Council suffers it, I shall not say you nay. Now, farewell, for grief still shadows me, and I can talk no more.”
CHAPTER XX.
THE COUNCIL OF THE HEART
Now, when Tikal was gone I sat silent, for although it might be necessary to save our lives, and to bring about the fulfilment of Maya’s love, all this double-dealing did not please me, and I could not talk of it with a light heart. But the señor said: