"But she cannot have been the instigator of, or even the accomplice in,
the plot for my assassination. That's against nature."

"I dare say, but everything in Nina is against nature. What I tell you is
the bare truth, for I was a witness of it all. Whenever the viceroy
visited her she wearied him with praise of your gallantry, your wit, your
noble actions, comparing you with the Spaniards, greatly to their
disadvantage.

"The count got impatient and told her to talk of something else, but she
would not; and at last he went away, cursing your name. Two days before
you came to grief he left her, saying,--

"'Valga me Dios! I will give you a pleasure you do not expect.'

"I assure you that when we heard the pistol-shot after you had gone, she
remarked, without evincing the slightest emotion, that the shot was the
pleasure her rascally Spaniard had promised her.

"I said that you might be killed.

"'All the worse for the count,' she replied, 'for his turn will come
also.'

"Then she began laughing like a madcap; she was thinking of the
excitement your death would cause in Barcelona.

"At eight o'clock the following day, your man came and told her that you
had been taken to the citadel; and I will say it to her credit, she
seemed relieved to hear you were alive."