"Yes, Sebastian, I will. I must speak. Senor Carbonnell--Lord Glisfoyle, I mean--knows your secret plotting in regard to the King; he holds, as you told me, documents which must compromise you, and may ruin you if he can prove they are genuine. These are what you call his weapons. There must be some inducement that can prevail upon him not to use them. Is that not so, Lord Glisfoyle?" she cried, turning to me in deep distress.
"You are forgetting yourself, Dolores. We are not children or women," said the Minister, sternly. "I will have no more of this child's play. You should not have brought Lord Glisfoyle here. Every word you utter but makes your blunder worse; and God knows you have done enough mischief already to satisfy even a woman."
"I asked you a question, Lord Glisfoyle," said Dolores, paying no regard to his protests.
"A question I find most difficult, I may say impossible, to answer. Your brother knows how he has treated me, and knows also how he would act were our positions reversed. I can say no more."
"But do you mean to use these letters?" she persisted.
"Since obtaining them I have obtained others, and much information. I know the part you have played throughout this business, Senor Quesada,"--I felt it easier to speak to him--"and I shall not rest until I have done my utmost to bring this home to you. In one thing you have wronged your sister. I should not have remained in what you term safe keeping more than a few hours at the utmost; for already there are forces at work for my liberation which even you would find it hopeless to resist. What you term your sister's blunder, therefore--procuring my liberation from the prison--is no more than an anticipation by those few hours of what must have followed."
"That may be. At any rate, you are free, and you owe it to her." This reminder of my obligation to Dolores was the first slight rift in his firmness.
"If it were possible, it would influence my attitude. But nothing can do that--nothing, at least, that you can do."
"I knew there was something. What is it? Tell us that, Lord Glisfoyle. I beg and pray of you, say what it is," cried Dolores, in a tone of fervent entreaty.
"It is useless even to name it. It is nothing less than the undoing of all this wilful and unholy persecution of the Carlists--wilful and unholy because undertaken for the sake of furthering, not the welfare of Spain, but your brother's ambition."