But those women who are thus bound for the most part bear no wife's love in their hearts, and so it was with your mother.

Indeed she both hated and feared her cousin Juan, though I think that he loved her more than anything on earth, and by one pretext and another she contrived to bring him to an agreement that no marriage should be celebrated till she was full twenty years of age.

But the colder she was to him, the more was he inflamed with desire to win her and also her possessions, which were not small, for like all Spaniards he was passionate, and like most gamesters and men of evil life, much in want of money.
'Now to be brief, from the first moment that your mother and I set eyes on each other we loved one another, and it was our one desire to meet as often as might be; and in this we had no great difficulty, for her mother also feared and hated Juan de Garcia, her nephew by marriage, and would have seen her daughter clear of him if possible.

The end of it was that I told my love, and a plot was made between us that we should fly to England.

But all this had not escaped the ears of Juan, who had spies in the household, and was jealous and revengeful as only a Spaniard can be.