"And your health improves, Señor, I hope—yes?"
"The Señorita is vastly gracious! Thanks to Don Martino I mend apace. Oh, yes, and shall soon be strong enough to die decorously, I trust, and in such fashion as the Señorita shall choose."
"Aha, Señor," said she, with flash of white teeth, "'tis an everlasting joy to me that I also am of noble Spanish blood. Some day when justice hath been done, and you are no more, I will have a stone raised up to mark where lie the bones of a great Spanish gentleman. As for thee, my poor Martino, that babblest o' vengeance, 'tis not for thee nor ever can be—thou that art only English, cold—cold—a very clod! Oh, verily there is more life, more fire and passion in a small, dead fish than in all thy great, slow body! And now, pray charge me my pistols; you have all the powder here." I shook my head. "Fool," said she, "I mean not to shoot you, and as for Don Federigo, since death is but his due, a bullet were kinder—so charge now these my pistols."
"I have no powder," said I.
"Liar!"
"I cast it into the sea lest I be tempted to shoot you."
Now at this she must needs burst out a-laughing.
"Oh, Englishman!" cried she. "Oh, sluggard soul—how like, how very like thee, Martino!" Then, laughing yet, she turned and left me to stare after her in frowning wonderment.
This night after supper, sitting in the light of the fire and finding the Don very wakeful, I was moved (at his solicitation) to tell him my history; the which I will here recapitulate as briefly as I may.
"I was born, sir, in Kent in England exactly thirty years ago, and being the last of my family 'tis very sure that family shall become a name soon to be forgotten—"