Bandit Love by Juanita Savage (fox in socks read aloud txt) 📕

you must, you must!" insisted her aunt passionately. "It is the only way of saving yourself. Think how you are placed, and what a ghastly tragedy it would be if it became known that you had surrendered yourself to a brigand. I will see Don Carlos at once, beg him, for your sake——"

"No! no!" interrupted Myra, springing to her feet. "I will not permit it, aunt. On no account must you appeal to Don Carlos. I will see him myself. You do not understand."

"No, I certainly do not understand, and I think you must be crazy," responded her aunt, with an impatient sigh. "Oh, Myra, don't you realise in what a terrible position you have placed yourself? You lay the blame on Tony Standish, but now only he can save you."

"Tony Standish has nothing to do with the matter now," retorted Myra. "Only Don Carlos can save me. I beg you, Aunt Clarissa, not to make any appeal to him. Leave me to settle the matter myself with him and to decide my own fate, work out my own destiny. Shall I see him now or wait till morning?"

"I think you had better wait till morning, and take time to consider how you are placed," said Lady Fermanagh, after a thoughtful pause, regarding Myra searchingly. "I fancy your mind must be temporarily deranged. Myra, are you keeping something back from me?"

"Everything depends on Don Carlos—and Cojuelo," Myra responded, evading the question. "Please say nothing to him, aunt, until I have spoken to him alone."

"Oh, the whole affair seems a crazy nightmare, and I don't know what to make of it all," said her aunt, with another sigh. "I wish we had never come to this wretched, lawless place. You must have had a premonition of trouble when you at first refused Don Carlos's invitation for no particular reason. Myra, my dear, I am sorry for you!"

Her feelings got the better of her, and with tears in her eyes she flung her arms around Myra and hugged her close to her breast. And Myra suddenly broke down, buried her face in her aunt's shoulder, and cried like a hurt child.

"Better go to bed, dear," said Lady Fermanagh recovering herself after a few minutes. "We are all suffering from the strain and are not normal…. Go to bed, Myra, and try to make up your mind to go back to England with Tony to-morrow…."

CHAPTER XIX

Myra went to bed, but it was a long time before she could compose herself to woo sleep, so full was her mind of disturbing thoughts, so many problems did she find herself called on to solve.

"Does he love me?" That was the question that she put to herself time and again, and could not answer. "Do I love him?" was another. And at heart she knew that if she were certain that the answer to the first question was in the affirmative, she could answer the second in a like manner.

"What will it profit me if I denounce him?" she soliloquised. "He says he is at my mercy, but he can claim me, and boast that I offered to marry him, even if I do revenge myself by denouncing him. Always he seems to have the advantage of me. To save my 'honour' now, and satisfy Aunt Clarissa, I shall either have to humble myself to ask him to marry me publicly, or else forgive Tony. Either course is repugnant."

She fell asleep at last, but was wrestling with her problem even in her jumbled dreams. She woke with a start, and with the impression strong upon her that someone or something had touched her face and her breast. Scared, she groped for the electric switch and flashed on the light above the bed, and as she did so she remembered having awakened months previously at Auchinleven just in the same sort of fright, to find Don Carlos's note on her pillow.

Some odd instinct or intuition told her that history had repeated itself, and it came hardly as a surprise to find a half-sheet of notepaper tucked into her nightdress close to her heart. With fingers that trembled slightly, Myra unfolded the note and read:

"Give me your heart and love, my wife, and I will devote my life to you. If you have no love, show no mercy."

Myra read the words again and again, sorely puzzled to decide what exactly they meant, wondering, incidentally, why Don Carlos had not awakened her to whisper what he had to say instead of leaving a note on her breast.

"Is he ashamed or afraid?" she asked herself—and could not answer her own question, nor a score of other questions which she put to herself as she tossed about restlessly for the remainder of the night, unable to sleep.

Her aunt, in dressing-gown and slippers, came to her room while she was sipping her early morning cup of tea.

"I hope you slept well, Myra dear, and are feeling better," she said. "I have hardly slept at all, and feel a wreck. Have you made up your mind what to do?"

"Not quite," Myra answered. "I must see Don Carlos first. But I think
I have decided to show no mercy to El Diablo Cojuelo."

"I don't know what you mean," commented her aunt. "For heaven's sake be sensible, Myra. It isn't a question of showing mercy to the brigand, but of saving yourself and your reputation. I shall be in agonies of anxiety until you have made a decision."

"I shall be in agonies myself until I have decided—and perhaps afterwards," replied Myra enigmatically. "I shall get up now and get the ordeal over as quickly as possible."

She wasted no time over her toilet, and save that she was very pale, she looked her usual lovely self as she left her room and walked towards the staircase. She halted for a moment in indecision as she saw Antony Standish on the landing, evidently waiting for her, then went on.

"I say, Myra, don't cut me," exclaimed Standish appealingly, nervously fingering his tie. "I've been waiting for you. I—I don't want to try to excuse myself for what happened up in that cursed brigand's den. My nerve deserted me completely."

"And you deserted me," interjected Myra coldly.

"You see, there was Don Carlos to be thought of as well as you, and—and I thought the only hope of being any help was to get away," Standish went on lamely. "Myra, I beg of you not to expose me to the world as a coward, and to forgive me. There are officials down below waiting to question you about what happened. They've been questioning me, and I'm afraid I didn't tell them the truth. Now they're questioning Don Carlos. From what I can make of it, someone has suggested that Don Carlos is in league with the brigand Cojuelo."

"Who suggested that?" asked Myra, with a convulsive start.

"I don't know, but the officials wanted to know if I saw Don Carlos at Cojuelo's place, and how I got away," Standish answered. "I told a lot of lies, and said that Cojuelo let me go when I promised to pay a ransom of fifty thousand pounds. Myra, you won't give me away and show me up? I'll shoot myself if you do. Myra, if you say nothing about my funking things, I'll swear never to breathe a word about your marrying the brigand fellow."

"That is indeed kind!" commented Myra ironically. "I do not propose to make public what happened if I can avoid it, but possibly El Diablo Cojuelo may tell."

Standish drew a breath of relief and wiped his moist brow.

"Thank you," he said. "I'll come down with you, if I may, and perhaps
I may be able to help you through with the officials."

"I hardly think I shall need your help," responded Myra coldly.

For all her outward appearance of self-possession, she was trembling inwardly, and her heart was beating unsteadily as she went down to the hall, to find Don Carlos and three officers in somewhat elaborate uniforms engaged in earnest conversation around a table, beside which was also seated another officer whom Myra recognised as the one who had led the Guardia Civil who had rescued her.

All rose immediately she appeared, and bowed courteously, and the junior officer hastened to place a chair for her.

"You will pardon us for troubling you so soon after your ordeal, Miss Rostrevor, but it is necessary that we ask you some questions in regard to El Diablo Cojuelo," said one of the officers in excellent English.

Myra merely inclined her head and seated herself, darting a glance at Don Carlos. His face was pale and his expression was as impassive and inscrutable as a Sphinx.

"This officer, who led the company which found you in the mountains yesterday, states that you were then apparently running away from Don Carlos de Ruiz," continued the superior official. "He also states that he understood you to assert positively that Don Carlos is El Diablo Cojuelo. Is that so, señorita?"

"If you have no love, show no mercy." The words of the note she had found on her breast flashed back into Myra's mind in the fraction of a second that she hesitated before answering the question on which the fate of Don Carlos depended. And in that fraction of a second she found the answer to many questions she had put to herself.

"What an absurd suggestion!" she exclaimed with scarce a tremor in her voice. "The officer is quite mistaken, but the fault is probably mine. I was so agitated that I did not know what I was saying, and was obsessed with the idea that El Diablo Cojuelo was close behind me."

Don Carlos sprang to his feet with an exultant laugh.

"You hear, señors!" he exclaimed. "I thought it would be more convincing if I left it to Miss Rostrevor to assure you the fantastic suggestion is without foundation. Now I am willing to answer any questions and tell you everything. Are you satisfied now? The Señor Standish has told you that I was flung into the cell in which he was imprisoned after he had tried to kill Cojuelo, and that Cojuelo afterwards threatened to torture him and shoot me unless we agreed to his terms."

"Pardon, Don Carlos, but I am merely carrying out my duty," said the Commandante, and turned to Myra again. "Did you see Don Carlos as well as Cojuelo, señorita, while you were in the outlaw's den?" he inquired.

"Yes, I saw them both together several times," answered Myra. "I heard Cojuelo threaten to shoot Don Carlos. It was Don Carlos who enabled me to make my escape, but I thought in my panic that it was Cojuelo who was trying to overtake me when I cried out to the officer of the Civil Guards."

"Is there, then, some resemblance between Don Carlos and the brigand
Cojuelo?" asked the Commandante.

Momentarily nonplussed, Myra shook her head.

"I cannot tell," she answered. "El Diablo Cojuelo always wore a cowl which disguised him."

"Yes, that's right, sir," broke in Tony Standish from the background. "We never saw the blighter without his cowl. I challenged him to be a man and meet me face to face, but he would not remove his disguise. You can take it from me, sir, that the idea that there was any connection between Cojuelo and Don Carlos is all moonshine."

"Thank you, Mr. Standish," said Don Carlos gravely, and glanced round at the faces of the officers. "May I take it, señors, that you are satisfied?"

The Commandante nodded, tugging at his grey moustache.

"Certainly, Don Carlos," he said. "You will understand that it was necessary for us to investigate the report that the English señorita had asserted that you were El Diablo Cojuelo, and that your refusal to deny the fact or to supply any explanation made this examination necessary. I understand that you may have considered the implication an insult, and now I can only apologise for troubling you and devote my energies to hunting down El Diablo Cojuelo. Can you offer us any assistance in locating his lair in the mountains?"

"You need