Don Juan Moraquitos offered any reward he might choose to name to the deliverer of his child, but, to the Spaniard's astonishment, Tristan refused all his master's offers.
The Spaniard would have given him freedom, but the slave chose rather to stay in the house in which he had been born.
All gifts of money he also refused—refused with a gloomy determination which Don Juan and Camillia tried in vain to overcome.
"No!" he said, "let me stay with you, my master and my mistress. The poor slave, Tristan, asks no more."
In vain the old negress, Zarah, pleaded with her son, imploring him to ask freedom for himself and his mother, that they might return to the native shore from which the captain of a slaver had brought them. He refused to listen to her entreaties, and turned from her with a gloomy scowl.
Don Juan and his daughter praised the fidelity of the slave, and promised him every privilege that could render his service a happy one. Only one person in that household divined the secret clew to the negro's strange conduct. That person was the seemingly frivolous and light-hearted Frenchwoman, Pauline Corsi.
A depth of penetration lurked beneath that girlish exterior. She read the true meaning of Tristan's conduct.
The slave—the negro—the thick-lipped, woolly-haired African—the lowest type of a despised and abhorred race, loved his mistress, the wealthy Spanish heiress, the beautiful and haughty Camillia Moraquitos!
CHAPTER XIII.
PAULINE CORSI OFFERS TO REVEAL A SECRET.