After a pause Inique said—(the capernian episode was evidently lost upon him)—
“I have no need of any mortal’s sympathy, Padilh, and the man that pities me openly must answer to my sword for it. You have done neither to my knowledge, yet you were not far off when I struck the boy,” (he dropped his voice here, as a weight on the conscience will make people do.) “If you choose to listen, the secret motives of a man who for fifteen years has had no thought for his second child, until moved to avenge her, because the first, an idiot, intervened, may startle your ears, Pedro Padilh.”
“The recital may ease your breast,” said our knight in some surprise.
“There is no likelihood of what you say,” answered Don Augustino, a shade of scorn crossing his moody face, “and I wish it otherwise. Why I choose you, a companion in arms, for confessor, you will learn in time; perhaps your long friendship and yesterday’s prompt action have their influence. These things you witnessed or know; the mad blows, their result, the measures I have taken to be constantly within reach of his voice? Why? have you, has any one, hesitated to give some cloak, some color, to so singular a course?”
Each of these interrogatories, rapidly put, Sir Pedro answered in turn by a slight token of assent; he was about to reply more fully to the last, when the other stopped him with a gesture.
“Never mind. I know what is said. That I hide away the living reminder of my crime from the world; that I am remorseful, or doing penance, or else crazed. Let them prate. Sir Pedro, by all the saints, the boy I struck is not my son!”
“Poor fellow!” thought the knight, compassionately; “his last plea is the right one.”
“Don Pedro Padilh, there was a man of good birth and great wealth, but little or no character, or care for character, whom I saved once from being hanged. He was grateful, after his headlong fashion, for the service, and in the end proposed to unite our infant children; he had one son, and I a son and daughter; and consolidate our joint estates. At first my soul revolted at the suggestion; an union between my own offspring and that of a redeemed felon, appeared to me monstrous. But while I debated the matter, difficulties softened. I knew better than any one the smallness of my fortune, which extravagance had reduced to the tatters of its former amplitude; but of this I said nothing, and the papers were signed in due form. That day was the last I could touch my breast proudly, and say, ‘Here is the abode of honor.’”