"Yes, trapped."
"By whom?"
"This scoundrel Tavares."
The baron almost fainted as he fell back on a sofa and gazed with starting eyes, and the woman proceeded and said:
"This man called upon me within an hour, and he knows all. He knows you are my son, he knows the acceptance is forged. Were you drunk? did you make a confidant of that man?"
"Give me time to think," said the baron in a husky tone, and then after rising and drinking ice water from a goblet he asked:
"What does all this mean?"
"I tell you the Spaniard, Tavares, called upon me; he knows all."
"Did he call alone?"
"He did."