his mercy.

Sometime during the course of the evening a wild idea came to
Isabel. Knowing that the manager would spend the night beneath her
roof, she planned to kill him. At first it seemed a simple thing
to do--merely a matter of a dagger or a pistol, while he slept--
but further thought revealed appalling risks and difficulties, and
she decided to wait. Poison was far safer.

That night she lay awake a long time putting her scheme into final
shape, and then for an interval that seemed longer she hung poised
in those penumbral regions midway between wakefulness and slumber.
Through her mind meanwhile there passed a whirling phantasmagoria,
an interminable procession of figures, of memories, real yet
unreal, convincing yet unconvincing. When she did at last lose all
awareness of reality the effect was merely to enhance the
vividness of those phantoms, to lend substance to her vaporous
visions. Constant brooding over the treasure had long since
affected Dona Isabel's brain, and as a consequence she often
dreamed about it. She dreamed about it again to-night, and,
strangely enough, her dreams were pleasant. Sebastian appeared,
but for once he neither cursed nor threatened her; and Esteban,
when he came, was again the lover who had courted her in Habana.
It was all very wonderful, very exciting, very real. Dona Isabel
found herself robed for him in her wedding-gown of white, and
realized that she was beautiful. It seemed also as if her powers
of attraction were magically enhanced, for she exercised a potent
influence over him. Her senses were quickened a thousandfold, too.
For instance, she could see great distances--a novel and agreeable
sensation; she enjoyed strange, unsuspected perfumes; she heard