"Ah, no! You will give me the encouragement of your presence."
She looked up at him helplessly, like a bird under the influence of a serpent, and saw the expression of his countenance. It was almost diabolical in its fiendish intent.
She shrank backward, and he sat down opposite her.
"My dear Louise," he said slowly "you and I have played at this game long enough. There was a time when I was fool enough to believe in you. There was a time when you led me on, inducing me to do your bidding, let that be what it might, merely for a word in recompense, flung at me like a bone to a starving dog; but I have learned something different now. I am grateful to you for my education. No one to look at me would believe that there was a time when I was a gentleman, when people called me handsome, when I was a dashing man of the world, who might have captured the richest senorita in all Mexico. You are responsible that I did not, my dear Louise. I loved you then, and there is nothing under heaven that you might have commanded which I would not do. You knew your power, and you used it. Well, Louise, the tables have turned. I don't love you now. Perhaps I have grown too old to love. Perhaps I have forgotten how; but I know my power over you now, and I mean to use it."
"What are you going—to do?" she stammered, hoarsely.
He leaned toward her, fixing her with his beady eyes, and answered calmly:
"Marry you—and give my daughter her honest name!"
"For God's sake, hush!" she exclaimed, springing up and glancing about her in alarm.
He put his hand upon her arm, and forced her gently into her seat again.
"Any one would think I had proposed a crime," he said, quietly, "from your frightened tone and exclamation. I don't call it a very bitter revenge, do you, that I propose to make you my wife? I don't call it a great hardship, that for the first time in all your life you will be able to face yourself and the world as a legal wife, bearing the name of a husband that is willing to claim you before all the world!"