hours with the _corregidor_, who was infamous for obstinacy, he
had found it impossible to make him 'hear reason,' and release the
prisoner, until this compromise of marriage was suggested. But how
could public justice be pacified for the clerk's unfortunate homicide
of Reyes, by a female cousin of the deceased man engaging to love,
honor, and obey the clerk for life? Kate could not see her way through
this logic. 'Nonsense, my friend,' said Urquiza, 'you don't comprehend.
As it stands, the affair is a murder, and hanging the penalty. But, if
you marry into the murdered man's house, then it becomes a little
family murder, all quiet and comfortable amongst ourselves. What has
the _corregidor_ to do with that? or the public either? Now, let
me introduce the bride.' Supper entered at that moment, and the bride
immediately after. The thoughtfulness of Kate was narrowly observed,
and even alluded to, but politely ascribed to the natural anxieties of
a prisoner, and the very imperfect state of liberation even yet from
prison _surveillance_. Kate had, indeed, never been in so trying a
situation before. The anxieties of the farewell night at St. Sebastian
were nothing to this; because, even if she had failed _then_, a
failure might not have been always irreparable. It was but to watch and
wait. But now, at this supper table, she was not more alive to the
nature of the peril than she was to the fact, that if, before the night
closed, she did not by some means escape from it, she never
_would_ escape with life. The deception as to her sex, though
resting on no motive that pointed to these people, or at all concerned
them, would be resented as if it had. The lady would resent the case as
a mockery; and Urquiza would lose his opportunity of delivering himself
from an imperious mistress. According to the usages of the times and
country, Kate knew that in twelve hours she would be assassinated.

People of infirmer resolution would have lingered at the supper table,