your heart English, Thomas; let no foreign devilments enter there. Hate
all Spaniards except your mother, and be watchful lest her blood should
master mine within you.'

I was a child then, and scarcely understood his words or what he meant
by them. Afterwards I learned to understand them but too well. As for my
father's counsel, that I should conquer my Spanish blood, would that I
could always have followed it, for I know that from this blood springs
the most of such evil as is in me. Hence come my fixedness of purpose or
rather obstinacy, and my powers of unchristian hatred that are not small
towards those who have wronged me. Well, I have done what I might to
overcome these and other faults, but strive as we may, that which is
bred in the bone will out in the flesh, as I have seen in many signal
instances.

There were three of us children, Geoffrey my elder brother, myself, and
my sister Mary, who was one year my junior, the sweetest child and the
most beautiful that I have ever known. We were very happy children, and
our beauty was the pride of our father and mother, and the envy of other
parents. I was the darkest of the three, dark indeed to swarthiness, but
in Mary the Spanish blood showed only in her rich eyes of velvet hue,
and in the glow upon her cheek that was like the blush on a ripe
fruit. My mother used to call me her little Spaniard, because of my
swarthiness, that is when my father was not near, for such names angered
him. She never learned to speak English very well, but he would suffer
her to talk in no other tongue before him. Still, when he was not there
she spoke in Spanish, of which language, however, I alone of the family
became a master--and that more because of certain volumes of old Spanish
romances which she had by her, than for any other reason. From my
earliest childhood I was fond of such tales, and it was by bribing me