With dexterous hand, she unmasked the man and herself at the same instant, revealing the faces of the Cavalier of the Rio Grande and Nina de Sutro.
“My God! Nina, you here?” gasped the man, his face turning livid in the moonlight.
“Yes, Austin Marvin, I am here on your track. I loved you, my hero among men, with all my heart and soul. Believing you an honorable man, I fled from the convent with you, to become your wife, though a mere girl.
“After a few short months you tired of me, because you knew that I would not get my fortune until I was twenty-one. Then you deserted me in a strange land; but I followed you, after reading your cruel note, and I have found you here after a long and weary search, here, breathing words of love, as you supposed, to another woman.
“But, Austin, my husband, I will forgive all if you will go with me from here, for in a few short years I will be in possession of my riches.”
Quickly came the answer of the man:
“You have conquered, Nina, and if you will forgive me I will go with you.”
“Come, for I forgive all,” was the happy answer.
One week later Nina de Sutro wrote the following letter, addressed to an army officer who was her guardian, and who had married her kinswoman:
“I have given you great distress of mind and heart, and yet love was my guide, and I believed I acted for the right in leaving the convent to wed the man whom I met under strange circumstances, and who once more crossed my path to command me as he might a slave.