"How is Miss de Barryos?"

Manuel Meriaz was standing facing Mrs. Chalmers who had risen to greet him, endeavoring to conceal her expression of repugnance, and succeeding poorly, a smile upon his coarse lips which was far from attractive, though he endeavored to make his voice gentle, even human.

"All right again, I fancy," replied Mrs. Chalmers, wearily.

"Still a prisoner?"

She made a gesture of deprecation.

"Jessica seems to have gone mad these last few days," she answered. "She must realize how impossible it is for this to go on longer, but she will listen to no reason, hear no argument. She will confide nothing to me, but is like a wild creature if I attempt to speak to her."

"Let her alone," advised Meriaz, indifferently. "Stolliker will be here tomorrow, and it will all come to an end quickly enough then."

"Stolliker here tomorrow? Who told you?"

"Jessica."

"Then she has talked to you?"

"No; nothing further than that. He telegraphed from Washington yesterday that he would stop off in New York while the Mexican officer, with an interpreter from the office here, would go on to Albany for the signature of the governor to those papers. By tomorrow night, or the next at furthest their bird will be landed, and then I fancy Jessica will let your beautiful ward take her own course."

"Shall you return to Mexico with them?"

"Certainly. That is necessary in order to pocket the rest of the money."

Mrs. Chalmers could not quite control the sigh of relief that bubbled through her lips in spite of effort.

Meriaz smiled.

"You will go with me, Louise?"

"I?" she stammered.

"Yes. You have always told me that it was a question of money that kept us apart. With the start I shall have when this trial is over I should have to be a poor financier indeed, if I could not make my fortune."

"But you will—wait until you have made it?

"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!"

"What do—you mean?" she gasped, her voice almost uncontrollable in its tremulousness.

"Don't imagine that you can deceive me!" he exclaimed, contemptuously. "I am quite aware that Bertram Chalmers was a myth. I know your life, Louise, year by year, day by day, almost hour by hour, from the time you were a school-girl, and even before. There is not an incident that I could not repeat to you with such exactitude as to be almost startling. I doubt if you could recite it so well yourself. But there are only a few years with which I have to do. You were young, beautiful, when you came to Mexico, where your little one was born. It was in your way, poor little morsel, and you abandoned it. What did you care whether it was brought up in the hut of a peon, or left to die in the sun-scorched swamps? I saw you then and loved you, in spite of your heartlessness, for we know little of sin in Mexico. It is only love that affects us. I was the only person about that attracted you then, and you yielded to me your smiles for the time, only, as I afterward discovered, to make me your tool, to force me to do that which you could not do yourself. I became your dupe, your accomplice at cards—no matter what. I do not regret a single sin that I ever committed for you, a single folly. If you had loved me, you would have found that I knew better than most men how to be a devoted slave, but you didn't. And after a time you returned to America. What became of your abandoned little one? I know, Louise!"

"You—know?"

"Yes."

"She lives?"

"It can't be that you are interested after all these years!" he cried, mockingly. "Yes, she lives."

"Where? For Heaven's sake, tell me!

"In Mexico, known as—my daughter. Ah! you see I loved you better even than you thought. She has grown to be a beautiful woman, but not like her mother. Your hair in those days was dark, Louise, though your eyes were blue. Her eyes are dark. Her hair black as night. Brought up in that tropical climate, she possesses all the attributes of a Mexican, even to the hot, ungovernable temper—tender and impulsive as a child under love's direction, but a fury, a very fiend, when opposition comes. She wants to know her mother, Louise."

"You—you have—told her?" the dry, stiff lips questioned.

"Everything! She even knows the secret of Jessica's birth, the—"

"Ah!"

"Did you think I did not know that?" he questioned calmly in answer to her little, inarticulate cry of horror. "I thought I told you that everything was an open page to me? Shall I tell you what it was I told her, Louise?"

No answer came, only the anguish in the burning eyes. He went on pitilessly:

"I told her that Jessica is—my daughter. Great God, woman! did you really think you could deceive me? Did you really believe I did not know? I have only bided my time, waiting, waiting, because, as you said neither of us had a sou with which to bless ourselves. With all your swindling and lying and cheating you did not make enough even for your own support, and I had nothing to add to it to speak of. But now things are different. I shall have a start. It will enable me to work the mines, which are of great promise, and I want my daughter to bear her proper name."

"You mean to tell Jessica this story?"

Meriaz shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

"You are an expert at manufacturing stories. If you can invent one that will deceive her and still induce her to do my will, I shall have no objection to you telling it. Otherwise, she must know the truth."

"Have you no mercy?" moaned the woman, wringing her hands together helplessly.

"What mercy had you upon me? What mercy had you upon that poor little helpless child whom you abandoned? Why is it that it is always the person who has done most harm in the world that is always crying out for mercy? Did you think you should be allowed to go through the world scot-free, you who have worked so much harm, you who have driven so many men to desperation, and broken the hearts of countless wives? I am not taunting you with your sins; why should I? Heaven knows I have no stones to cast; but when my time comes I shall face my punishment with as much indifference as I have committed crime. And, after all, what is it that I am offering you? Is it so great a shame to be the wife of any man, you who have borne no name that was justly yours since you wilfully dropped the one your father gave you? Louise, when will you be my wife?"

"You must give me time!" she groaned.

He bowed.

"I have already given you twenty years in which to consider it," he returned, lightly. "I suppose another day will make no difference. I give you, then, until tomorrow, when Stolliker returns. I go as a member of that party, remember, and you must accompany me. We shall be a happy family; you united to your long-neglected child, I to my daughter whom I have allowed you to keep during all these years. I shall expect your answer when Stolliker returns to take his prisoner."