Page:Gaston Leroux--The bride of the sun.djvu/47

Rh "He must have been a bit of a fool," hazarded Dick. "A true conqueror guesses there are new lands to conquer even before he sees them."

"Like Pizarro and Cortes!" exclaimed the Marquis.

"Who came to destroy everything ..." began Uncle Francis. Fortunately, Don Christobal did not hear him, and he stopped in time. Maria-Teresa, seated opposite the savant, had trodden on his foot, and he bit his lip, remembering that de la Torre, the Marquis' ancestor, had been one of Pizarro's "destroyers."

Both old ladies, however, had heard, and opened their eyes at this denunciation of a cause which to them was that of the true faith against the infidel. Maria-Teresa, anxious to smooth matters over, quickly brought them back to their Inca legends.

"All this is very fine," she said, "but there is nothing to show that the Indians still sacrifice human beings."

"How can you say that!" they exclaimed in chorus.

"Well, has anybody ever had definite proof of it?"

Aunt Agnes was not to be shaken in her convictions.

"When I was a little girl," she declared, "I had an old nurse who belonged to one of the