"They would not give passage to women in the galleons," she answered. "Therefore I came as I did; also I knew I might better find Eaton--confront him, in a garb, another sex, which would prevent him from recognising the little child he had treated so evilly." Then, suddenly, with a wail, she exclaimed: "Oh, my God! Mervan, I have not come to talk of this, but to be with you for our last hour; one hour before we die. The Alcáide has granted me that--and one other thing--on conditions;" and I felt her shudder in my arms.
"Before we die," I repeated stupidly, saying most of her words over again. "Granted you this and one other thing--and on conditions. What conditions? Tell me all; make me to understand. We die? Not you! They cannot slay you."
From some neighbouring church a deep-toned bell was pealing solemnly as I spoke. Far down below, by the river banks, I heard the splash of some fishermen's boats as they went by to their night work--always, until my eyes close for the last time, I shall remember those sounds accompanying her words in answer to mine--shall hear them in my ears--her words: "I can slay myself."
"Juana!"
"Must slay myself," she went on, "there is no other way. Can I live without you--or, living, fullfil those conditions?" and, even as she said this, our lips met. "But," I asked, my voice hoarse with grief and misery, "what are they, and wherefore granted?"
"He gives me one life--his--my father's! My God! he my father!--he will not give me yours because he thinks you are my lover--and--and the condition is that on the night when he is set free, I fly from Lugo with him, Morales, to Portugal. He will be safe there, he says. 'Tis rumoured the king has joined England."
"And you accept the terms?" I asked, bitterly, knowing that I loved this girl as fondly as she loved me. Had loved her since I discovered her sex as she reeled into my arms on that night. "You accept?"
"I accept. Nay!" she exclaimed, "do not thrust me from you--you cannot doubt my love, my adoration. Else why am I here a prisoner in Lugo--why, except because I could not quit your side, could not tear myself from you?"
"How then accept?"
"Listen. I must save him. God!--he is my father--to my eternal shame! Yet--yet, being so, his soul must not go to seek its Maker yet--'tis too deeply drenched with crime, he must have time--time to live--to repent--to wash away his sins. Oh! Mervan, you are my love, my love, my first and only love--will be my last--yet--I must save him."