Ramon's suspicion kindled on the instant. He turned upon the banker.
"So! I begin to see! That was a trick, then, to betray my father."
"But wait!" Gertrudis exclaimed, sharply. "Did you not trick us also? Did you not use the General, your father, to make me give up the man I love? Which of us, then, is the better?"
Andres Garavel spoke threateningly, menacingly, to his daughter. "Enough! Our word was given, and you have broken it! You have brought disgrace to our name. Can a Garavel be President of the Republic with his daughter wed to a murderer?"
"He is not that!"
"It was no marriage, and it will not stand. I will have it annulled. Such things are easily done, Ramon. She is no wife. The man was a criminal, a fugitive, even when he forced her to marry—"
"No, no! You cannot do that. It was I who asked him to marry me." The girl lied tremulously, panic-stricken at the threat. "Before God, I am his wife!" she maintained. "And if this marriage has a flaw, then I will stand beside the prison gates and remarry him as he comes forth."
"He will not come forth," Ramon declared, harshly.
"Oh yes! And now will you take me to him?"
"NO!" her father bellowed. "You are my daughter, you are under my roof, and here you shall stay until you give up this madness and this man."
"That I can never do," she retorted, proudly. "You see, I am not all Spanish, I have in me also the blood of his people, and that makes me steadfast. I could not doubt him if I wished."