"See," she hissed, letting each word drop slowly from her lips, "see, Doctor Mariana, my uncle, you are not afraid of death—I know—but you do not wish to die now. There are so many things unfinished—so much yet to do. I know you, uncle! Now let me take my will of this young man. Afterwards I am at your service—for ever—for ever—more faithfully than before!"
"How can I trust you?" said the Jesuit; "to-morrow you might go mad again!"
"These things do not happen twice in a lifetime," said Valentine la Niña, "and as for Jean d'Albret, I shall put him beyond the reach of any second chance!"
Her uncle nodded his head. He knew when a woman has the bit between her teeth, and though he had a remedy even for such cases, he judged that the present was not the time to use it.
So Valentine la Niña went out, the knife still in her hand.
The Jesuit of Toledo threw himself back on his writing-chair and wiped his brow with a handkerchief.
"Ouff!" he cried, emptying his chest with a gust of relief, "this is what it is to have to do with that wild animal, Woman! In Madrid they tame the tiger, till it takes victual from its keeper's very hand. He is its master, almost its lover; I have seen the tiger arch its back like a cat under the caress. It sleeps with the arm of the keeper about its neck! Till one day—one day—the tiger that was tamed falls upon the tamer, the master, the lover, the friend! So with a woman. Have I not trained and nurtured, pruned and cared for this soul as for mine own. She was tame. She knew no will but mine. Clack! In a moment, at sight of a comely youth in a court suit asleep, as Endymion on some Latmian steep, she is wild again. Better to let her go than perish, keeping her."
Mariana listened a while, but the chamber of his work was as far from the lugubrious noises of the den of Dom Teruel as if it had been the Place of Eyes itself. Neither could he hear any sound from the little summer parlour which had been put at the service of his niece.
The old worldly-wise smile came back upon his lips.