For Otomie seemed such woman as men dream of but very rarely win, seeing
that the world has few such natures and fewer nurseries where they can
be reared. At once pure and passionate, of royal blood and heart, rich
natured and most womanly, yet brave as a man and beautiful as the night,
with a mind athirst for knowledge and a spirit that no sorrows could
avail to quell, ever changing in her outer moods, and yet most faithful
and with the honour of a man, such was Otomie, Montezuma's daughter,
princess of the Otomie. Was it wonderful then that I found her fair, or,
when fate gave me her love, that at last I loved her in turn? And yet
there was that in her nature which should have held me back had I but
known of it, for with all her charm, her beauty and her virtues, at
heart she was still a savage, and strive as she would to hide it, at
times her blood would master her.
But as I lay in the chamber of the palace of Chapoltepec, the tramp of
the guards without my door reminded me that I had little now to do with
love and other delights, I whose life hung from day to day upon a hair.
To-morrow the priests would decide my fate, and when the priests were
judges, the prisoner might know the sentence before it was spoken. I was
a stranger and a white man, surely such a one would prove an offering
more acceptable to the gods than that furnished by a thousand Indian
hearts.
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