'Perhaps they think it better to live and wed again,' answered Otomie
very quietly, but I saw her eyes flash and her breast heave in the
moonlight as she spoke.

'Enough of this foolish talk,' I said. 'Listen, Otomie; if you had cared
for me truly, surely you would have saved me from this dreadful doom,
or prevailed on Guatemoc to save me. You are Montezuma's daughter, could
you not have brought it about during all these months that he issued his
royal mandate, commanding that I should be spared?'

'Do you, then, take me for so poor a friend, Teule?' she answered hotly.
'Know that for all these months, by day and by night, I have worked and
striven to find a means to rescue you. Before he became a prisoner I
importuned my father the emperor, till he ordered me from his presence.
I have sought to bribe the priests, I have plotted ways of escape,
ay, and Guatemoc has helped, for he loves you. Had it not been for the
coming of these accursed Teules, and the war that they have levied in
the city, I had surely saved you, for a woman's thought leaps far, and
can find a path where none seems possible. But this war has changed
everything, and moreover the star-readers and diviners of auguries have
given a prophecy which seals your fate. For they have prophesied that
if your blood flows, and your heart is offered at the hour of noon
to-morrow on the altar of Tezcat, our people shall be victorious over
the Teules, and utterly destroy them. But if the sacrifice is celebrated
one moment before or after that propitious hour, then the doom of
Tenoctitlan is sealed. Also they have declared that you must die, not,
according to custom, at the Temple of Arms across the lake, but on the
great pyramid before the chief statue of the god. All this is known
throughout the land; thousands of priests are now offering up prayers
that the sacrifice may be fortunate, and a golden ring has been hung