“Think of your own sweet character, señorita! The faults of another cannot change that. You must live—live! We will make our way to the chapel, and please the saints I can hold it until the Governor comes! I pray he arrives soon, else he will find nothing but ruins and dead men.”
“If he does not come—? If he stops at San Luis Rey de Francia to give aid there——?”
“Then perhaps we are lost,” the caballero replied.
“You will not let them take me. You will slay me first?”
“You ask me to kill the thing I love,” he said. “Yet my love is great enough, I think, to do even that to save you from a worse fate. I promise, señorita. Yet I pray nothing of the sort will be necessary. I pray the Governor comes, and I can save you until then, and hand you over to him safely.”
“And—yourself—?” she asked.
“I am not concerned about myself. Life means nothing to me, señorita, when it does not hold your affection. Ah, do not turn away——”
“I am not turning away.”
“You have called me gambler, swindler, wronger of women. I swear I am not the last, señorita, nor have I ever swindled a man. Yet I am the notorious Captain Fly-by-Night, you say. I made a foolish boast that was an insult to you and was ostracized by all at San Diego de Alcalá—that is what I was told when I first came. I suffered—and you were kind. I saw you—and I knew what love was. Can you conceive that love would purify a man, señorita, make him over, make him regret every mean and petty thing he had done in his life?”
“I—do not know.”