"For my sake, Alisanda?"
"That I might come to you, my knight! When you left me, my uncle became all the more insistent that I should marry the Governor-General. The padre had already planned for me this way of escape. I took the vows of a novice. After that neither my uncle nor Doña Marguerite dared oppose the counsel of the padre when he told them I must go to the Convent of my Order in Vera Cruz. You see how selfish a love is mine. I could not give you up, Juan. I was not a heroine, to give myself for the saving of an oppressed people."
"No!" I rejoined. "You could not have helped the people of New Spain. They must fight their own battles. No people are worthy of freedom who are not ready to give their lives for the ending of tyranny. Had you sacrificed yourself to Salcedo, he would either have betrayed the revolution, or he would have made himself a dictator, more tyrannous than before."
"You told me that in Chihuahua, dear. I repeated your words to the padre, and he confirmed the statement. It was well, for had he shared my uncle's faith in Don Nimesio, he also might have sought to persuade me to give myself to the cause of liberty."
"As it was," I murmured, "you attempted to come to me—alone!"
"Not alone, Juan. There were the padre and my faithful Chita."
"Ah, Chita—I did not see her in the boat."
My lady began to weep. "Poor Chita! She was killed by a cannon-ball, when standing beside me, during that fearful destruction of our ship by the pirate sloop."
"Pirate!" I repeated. "They flew the black flag?"
"No; but it was a flag unknown to our captain, and he said they must be pirates. They attacked us without warning and signalled that they would give us no quarter—and they killed my poor Chita!"