I spoke to him thus calmly and coldly, feeling no passion, feeling nothing.  For in that strange hour I was no longer Thomas Wingfield, I was no longer human, I was a force, an instrument; I could think of my dead son without sorrow, he did not seem dead to me, for I partook of the nature that he had put on in this change of death.  I could even think of de Garcia without hate, as though he also were nothing but a tool in some other hand.  Moreover, I knew that he was mine, body and mind, and that he must answer and truly, so surely as he must die when I chose to kill him.  He tried to shut his lips, but they opened of themselves and word by word the truth was dragged from his black heart as though he stood already before the judgment seat.

‘I loved your mother, my cousin,’ he said, speaking slowly and painfully; ’from a child I loved her only in the world, as I love her to this hour, but she hated me because I was wicked and feared me because I was cruel.  Then she saw your father and loved him, and brought about his escape from the Holy Office, whither I had delivered him to be tortured and burnt, and fled with him to England.  I was jealous and would have been revenged if I might, but there was no way.  I led an evil life, and when nearly twenty years had gone by, chance took me to England on a trading journey.  By chance I learned that your father and mother lived near Yarmouth, and I determined to see her, though at that time I had no thought of killing her.  Fortune favoured me, and we met in the woodland, and I saw that she was still beautiful and knew that I loved her more than ever before.  I gave her choice to fly with me or to die, and after a while she died.  But as she shrank up the wooded hillside before my sword, of a sudden she stood still and said: 

’"Listen before you smite, Juan.  I have a death vision.  As I have fled from you, so shall you fly before one of my blood in a place of fire and rock and snow, and as you drive me to the gates of heaven, so he shall drive you into the mouth of hell."’

‘In such a place as this, cousin,’ I said.

‘In such a place as this,’ he whispered, glancing round.

‘Continue.’

Again he strove to be silent, but again my will mastered him and he spoke.

’It was too late to spare her if I wished to escape myself, so I killed her and fled.  But terror entered my heart, terror which has never left it to this hour, for always before my eyes was the vision of him of your mother’s blood, before whom I should fly as she fled before me, who shall drive me into the mouth of hell.’

‘That must be yonder, cousin,’ I said, pointing with the sword toward the pit of the crater.

‘It is yonder; I have looked.’

‘But only for the body, cousin, not for the spirit.’

‘Only for the body, not for the spirit,’ he repeated after me.

‘Continue,’ I said.

’Afterwards on that same day I met you, Thomas Wingfield.  Already your dead mother’s prophecy had taken hold of me, and seeing one of her blood I strove to kill him lest he should kill me.’