But I see well that I am
not welcome, and though it is too late to go back upon my word, have
no fear. There are others, and I shall not trouble you. I have given my
message, is it your pleasure that I should go? The solemn ceremony of
wedlock will be on the twelfth day from now, O Tezcat.'
Now I rose from my seat and took her hand, saying:
'I thank you, Otomie, for your nobleness of mind. Had it not been for
the comfort and friendship which you and Guatemoc your cousin have given
me, I think that ere now I should be dead. So you desire to comfort me
to the last; it seems that you even purposed to die with me. How am I
to interpret this, Otomie? In our land a woman would need to love a
man after no common fashion before she consented to share such a bed as
awaits me on yonder pyramid. And yet I may scarcely think that you whom
kings have sued for can place your heart so low. How am I to read the
writing of your words, princess of the Otomie?'
'Read it with your heart,' she whispered low, and I felt her hand
tremble in my own.
I looked at her beauty, it was great; I thought of her devotion, a
devotion that did not shrink from the most horrible of deaths, and a
wind of feeling which was akin to love swept through my soul. But even
as I looked and thought, I remembered the English garden and the English
maid from whom I had parted beneath the beech at Ditchingham, and the
words that we had spoken then.
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