ignominy! Marie! my Marie! the seemingly guilty wife! Well, put forth
your tale: I am not the man to shrink from my own words. Speak truth,
and I will hear you; and--and, if I can, not spurn you from me as a
liar! Speak out!"

Don Luis needed not a second bidding: he had remarked, seen, and
heard quite enough the evening of Don Ferdinand's banquet, to require
nothing more than the simple truth, to harrow the heart of his hearer,
even while Morales disbelieved his every word. Speciously, indeed,
he turned his own mere suspicions as to Marie's unhappiness, and her
early love for Arthur, into realities, founded on certain information,
but with this sole exception--he told but the truth. Without moving
a muscle, without change of countenance, or uttering a syllable of
rejoinder, Don Ferdinand listened to Garcia's recital, fixing his
large piercing eye on his face, with a gaze that none but one so
hardened in hypocrisy could have withstood. Once only Morales's
features contracted for a single instant, as convulsed by some spasm.
It was the recollection of Marie's passionate tears, the night of the
festival; and yet she had shed them on _his_ bosom. How could she be
guilty? And the spasm passed.

"I have heard you, Don Luis," he said, so calmly, as Garcia ceased,
that the latter started. "If there be truth in this strange tale, I
thank you for imparting it: if it be false--if you have dared pollute
my ears with one word that has no foundation, cross not my path
again, lest I be tempted to turn and crush you as I would a loathsome
reptile, who in very wantonness has stung me."

He turned from him rapidly, traversed the brief space, and disappeared
within his house. Don Luis looked after him with a low, fiendish