“Señor Don Rafael!” cried a hoarse voice at break of day. “Rise, your
grace! for strange things have happened while we have slept! Ay, Señor,
if the demon himself has not carried away Pedro the gatekeeper, who can
tell us how he has gone?”
“Gone!” echoed the voice of Don Rafael from within.
“Gone, Señor, and left not even so much as his shadow; yet the doors are
locked, and not even in the postern is there so much as a crack, nor the
key in the lock. The muleteers, who were to be upon the road at
cock-crow, have waited until both they and their beasts are cramped with
standing, and all to no purpose.”
“Is this true?” exclaimed Don Rafael, presently appearing with a
_serape_ thrown over his shoulders, and shivering in the morning air.
“Ay, man, thou hast a tongue like a woman’s. And Pedro, thou sayest, is
gone?”
The man drew one hand sharply across the other, as who should say,
“vanished!” though his lips ejaculated, “Gone, Señor; and who is to open
the door now that it is shut? And who could shut the door upon Pedro but
Satan himself?”
“Who, indeed?” said Don Rafael, gravely. “Think you so bulky a fellow
could creep through the keyhole of the postern and take the key with
him? By good fortune, he brought me the key of the great door as usual,
and here it is. If the Devil hath carried away one gatekeeper on his
shoulders, it is but fair he should send me another; and thou, Felipe,
shall be the man.”
Felipe stared a moment; then with a transient change of expression which
might be of intelligence, or simply a vague smile at his own good
fortune, extended his hand for the keys; and suddenly mute with the
weight of his unexpected promotion trudged down the stone stairs, across
the silent inner court and the outer one, where by this time the
household servants were exchanging exclamations of wonder and alarm with
the impatient muleteers. Felipe unlocked the wide doors, threw them open
with a clang, sank into Pedro’s place upon the stone bench, and
thereafter reigned in his stead.
The wonder of Pedro’s disappearance grew greater and ever greater, until
the boy Pepé said sulkily he had been played a shabby trick. Had not he
said to Pedro the night before, when the Señor Don Rafael had told them
that the General Vicente Gonzales was in El Toro, that for a word he
himself would go to him there; and doubtless Pedro had stolen away
alone, like the surly fox that he was. But the saints be praised, the
road was open to one man as well as another.
“Hush!” said one in a warning tone; “though Pedro may have a fancy for a
cleft head or broken bones, must we all cry for the same? Go to thou
Pepé! thou art scarce old enough to leave the shade of thy mother’s
reboso. Did I not see thee sucking thy thumb but last Saint John’s day?”
There was a roar of laughter, and though Pepé raged, no one heeded his
wrath; the talk was all of Pedro. That he had gone to be a soldier was
universally believed; that Don Rafael, and not the Devil, had aided his
going was not for a moment thought of. The women crossed themselves, and
the men spat on the floor emphatically,—yet there had been more
mysteries than that in the life of Pedro.
Florencia, who was distraught at her uncle’s disappearance, and tore her
hair and bewailed herself as a bereaved niece should, found her way to
Chinita to pour out her griefs and fears; although since the change in
the young girl’s position they had by common consent ignored their
former relations,—Florencia, because of the wide social gulf fixed
between the great house and the hovels around it; Chinita, from pure
indifference. She was too full of her new life to think of the old, or
of the persons connected with it.
It was so early that she was still not fully dressed, and the chocolate
wherewith to break her fast stood untouched upon the table, when the
sound of some one sobbing at the door brought a tone of sorrow into
thoughts which had simply been vexed before.
Chinita had risen in an ill humor. Doña Rita and Rosario, and even Chata
herself, had failed to show any surprise at her position. True, Don
Rafael had warned them of it; but at least something more than a kindly
indifference might have greeted her,—if only a glance of envy from
Rosario. What wonderful things had they all seen, that they had no
thoughts to spare for her? Bah! Rosario had neither eyes nor thoughts
for any one but the young officer with the red neck-tie. Well, they
should see! But what of Doña Rita,—and Chata too? Why, Chinita hardly
knew her. Was she also thinking but of herself, like the others? That
was a change in Chata, and one that ill-suited her.
Chinita had slept badly for thinking of these things; and truth to tell,
when her mind was ill at ease the softness of the bed troubled her. She
had dreamed of snakes, of three snakes who had lifted their heads out of
water to hiss at her. Here was the first one. Certainly she had not
dreamed of snakes for nothing. Well, to be sure, here was Florencia,
whom she had almost forgotten, come with some trouble! She felt a little
flutter of gratification, and unconsciously assumed the air of a
_patrona_, as she said,—
“Ah, is it then Florencia? And what ails thee; and how can I help thee?
What, has Tomasito broken the newest water-jar, or by better fortune his
neck? Or has Terecita choked herself with a dry bean?”
“God has not desired to do me such favors,” returned Florencia, piously
and with a flood of tears. “No, rather than my children should become
little angels, he prefers that they shall be friendless upon the earth.
_Ay de mi!_ what is a father, what is a husband (and you know the very
driveller of a man I have), what is any one to an uncle who was a
gatekeeper of Tres Hermanos?—a veritable treasure of silver, a spring of
refreshing! Was there ever a time Florencia asked a shilling of Pedro in
vain?”
At another time Chinita would have laughed at this pious exaggeration;
now it filled her with inexpressible alarm.
“What! is my god-father dead?” she cried, wringing her hands and for the
moment relapsing into the demonstrative gestures and cries of her
plebeian training. “_Ay Dios_, Florencia, it cannot be! Answer me,
stupid one! Is thy mouth as full as thy eyes that thou canst not
answer?”
“Is chocolate served to the poor at day-break?” cried Florencia in an
injured tone, and with a glance at the dainty breakfast; and then at an
impatient word from Chinita she explained how Pedro had departed in the
night, though the hacienda doors were locked upon the inside, and
conjectured that if he had not been spirited away by the Devil, he had
gone to join the Liberal General Gonzales,—there could be no other
alternative. She had heard Señor Don Rafael talking to him till late in
the night of how Gonzales had beaten the General Ramirez at El Toro, and
was still there trying to strengthen his forces, while those of the
Clergy had disappeared, no one knew where, but surely to gather men and
means to recover the lost position.
Chinita’s eyes flashed. She knew nothing of politics, but she thrilled
at the name of Ramirez. She laughed scornfully that Pedro should throw
his puny strength into the force against him. Still she said, “God keep
him;” and jested away Florencia’s fears.
“Bah! What should happen to my god-father?” she said. “And thou knowest
thou wilt want for nothing. Hark thou! there is nothing to cry for that
thy uncle is gone. Has he not often told us of the dollars he made in
the wars?”
“I fear me he is likely rather to receive hard blows than hard dollars
now,” answered Florencia, disconsolately,—an expression of expectancy,
however, relieving her doleful countenance, as she added, “Ah, Chinita
of my soul, thou wert ever the kerchief to wipe away my tears.”
Chinita laughed. “Thou used to say I was a prickly pear to draw tears,
rather than a kerchief to dry them,” she presently said, pushing her
chocolate toward Florencia, and thrusting into her hand the little
twists of bread.
“There, take them; I would a thousand times rather have a thick cake and
a drink of white gruel. One is not always in the humor for sweets;” and
she tugged viciously at the hair she tried vainly to smooth,—she was
always at feud with it because it was not longer. But at last she
confined it in two short tresses, tying each with a red ribbon; and then
suddenly dropping on her knees before Florencia, placed her hands palm
downward upon the floor, and looking up in the woman’s face with a laugh
exclaimed, as a tinge of red deepened the olive of her complexion, “And
what of the American, Florencia? Is he like him thou sayest the Señorita
Herlinda loved?”
“Ave Maria Purissima!” cried the startled woman. “The saints forbid that
I should say such a thing of a Garcia, and she dedicated to the
Madonna!” But recovering herself, “Certainly this American is like the
other. Is not one cactus like another that grows on the same mountain?
Should a white-blooded American be like a cavalier of blue-blood, or
like an Indian of the villages? Yet both, one and the other, are we not
Mexicans?” and she uttered the words as one might say, “Are we not
gods?”
“That is very true,” commented Chinita, gravely; “and yet they are not
frights, these Americans. Why should not the Señorita Herlinda have
loved one if it pleased her? Listen, Florencia; I will tell thee a dream
I had one night. When one’s bed is too soft, one dreams dreams.”
Florencia looked at the girl with an admiring glance. How amiable she
could be, this Chinita, when she chose. “Little puss! little puss!” she
murmured, giving her the pet name Pedro had used, when in her kittenish
moods one had never known whether she would scratch or fondle one with
soft purrings, begun and ended in a moment. “Little puss! thou wert ever
good to thy Florencia.”
“Thou art a flatterer!” ejaculated Chinita, half-inclined to withhold
her confidence, yet longing for a listener. “Ay, Florencia, thou knowest
not what it is to sit for hours in the gloom within four walls. Ah, what
thoughts come into one’s head! When I ran about the village, the wind
blew the thoughts about as it did my hair; but now my brains are like
cobwebs, and when a thought touches them it clings like dust, and so
they grow thicker and heavier until my very skull aches;” and she
pressed her head with her hands, and heaved a deep sigh.
“But to think is not to dream,” said Florencia, in some disappointment,
for she had a child’s love for the marvellous, and did not understand
Chinita’s abstractions,—unstudied and simple though they were.
“But dreams come from thoughts,” answered Chinita; “and what should I
think of here but of mysteries,—such as why the Señora should keep me
with her, though she loves me not; why she walks the floor and counts
her beads, and when she forgets I am in the room murmurs over and over
the name of Herlinda; why she looks before her sometimes, as you used to
tell me the woman looked who saw the ghost of the American,—and that is
always when she chances to meet this Don ’Guardo whom she will not speak
of, or suffer Doña Feliz to invite to our table, though he stays here so
long. And after I have asked so many things, I set myself to the answer.
Oh, you would wonder at what I say to myself of all these things,—and
then sometimes come dreams to tell me I am right.”
Florencia looked at the door vaguely,—she was thinking perhaps she had
better go.
“Yes, yes,” continued Chinita, as if to herself, “I am growing perhaps
like the owl,—I, who in the broad sunlight saw nothing, have discovered
many things here in the dark. Well, well, Florencia, one thought came to
me on a vexed night when I could not sleep. I had been talking to Doña
Feliz that day. I know not why, but I am with Doña Feliz like the young
fox my god-father tamed,—when I touched him with my hand he was pleased,
yet he bristled and longed to bite. Good! we had talked that day.
Yes,—it was of the nuns, and she said the Señora might desire I should
be one; and I was angry, and said I would not be shut up to pray as the
Señorita Herlinda had been; and then Doña Feliz bade me be silent and
ponder what she had said. And after she went away it was not of myself I
thought, but of the Señorita Herlinda; and in the midst of my thoughts I
saw the American pass the court, and Doña Isabel, who was near, turned
herself away, as if an adder had darted upon her.”
Florencia looked up with a mute inquiry or fascination in her gaze.
Chinita, in a sort of monotone, followed the thread of her thoughts.
“When I went to sleep at last, I dreamed that I, though still Chinita,
was Herlinda, and that the American who was lying wounded in the room
below came up the stairs, and tapped lightly at my window. I stepped
softly and looked out at him through the grating. Ah, it was this Don
’Guardo, yet so different, as a man is different from his reflection in
a glass; and I did not wonder to see him there. I put my hand out and
touched him, and was happy. And as I stood at the bars,—I myself, and
yet the _niña_ Herlinda,—the man of my dream said, as a husband says to
his wife, ‘Open, my life;’ and when I opened the door he led in by the
hand a little child,—I knew it to be his child, though it had not blue
eyes nor the yellow hair. Well, I stood there, and stood there, and
strove to speak and could not; and the vision of the man and of the
child faded, and the thought that I was still Herlinda faded too, and
the dream was ended.”
She ceased speaking, and looked at Florencia with a vague yet searching
gaze.
“By my faith, a strange dream!” murmured Florencia, disquieted. “You
should have lighted a blessed candle when you woke, and passed it before
you three times, saying an _Ave_ each time. Santa Inez! I would rather
see the ghost of the American than dream such a dream!”
“Coward! it frightened me not,” continued the girl. “And I did not seem
to wake, though I knew that I, Chinita, lay in the bed, and that my head
sank deep in the soft pillow, and that I could not or would not raise
it; and the meaning of the dream crept into my mind, as the light creeps
into a dark room. Yes, I felt as I used to when I saw the little green
blades shoot up in the spring, and I could think how the corn would
grow, and the leaves would wave, and the maize would lie in the silk and
the yellow sheath; and so I had thought of what I had heard,—of the love
of Herlinda for the American, and what might have come of it.”
“Hush!” interrupted Florencia with a scared look. “You said you dreamed
of a child. Did you see its face?”
“No,” answered Chinita, slowly. “But what need that I should see it?”
The two had risen as if by one impulse, and looked into each other’s
eyes. The woman was awed as much by the penetration and daring of the
young girl’s mind as by the thought that for the first time arose within
her.
She cast her thoughts back. She had been young when the American was
murdered, when the Señorita Herlinda had left the hacienda never to
return, when the child had been found at the gate; yet she wondered that
she had been so blind to what now appeared so plain, and that all
alike—the wise and simple, the old and young—had been so utterly dazzled
by the glamor that surrounded the family of Garcia that no suspicion of
dishonor might attach to its women, or of cowardice to its men. Surely
none other than Herlinda Garcia would have escaped the lynx-eyed Selsa,
or a score of other scandal-loving women! Curiously enough, while a
feeling of detraction for the nun, whom she had long been used to
canonize in her thoughts, stole into her mind, a sensation of
traditional reverence for the Garcia arose for the young girl before
her. Florencia’s ideas of morality were perhaps vague on all points;
they certainly did not reach that of aspersion of the innocent fruit of
another’s fault.
“Ay, _niña_,” the woman said at last with a gasp, “it is not every one
who drinks red wine that is happy. Thanks to God, the peasant woman who
carries a burden in her arms too soon needs only to suckle it under her
scarf, like any mother, and needs not to close upon herself the doors of
a convent. Santa Maria! who would have thought such things of the _niña_
Herlinda?”
“Be silent!” cried Chinita, with a tardy repentance of her confidence.
“How do I know that I am not the worst of evil thinkers, and a fool, a
very fool? Look thou, Florencia, it is thou who shall discover the truth
for me. Pedro is gone; perhaps he never knew it. The Tio Reyes must
know; but where is he? Yet I _must_ know. Oh, I could bear the truth
from Feliz, from Doña Isabel; but they are as silent and as sorrowful as
the image of the Madre Dolores. It is thou, Florencia, who must help me.
Oh, it will be but a diversion for thee. Thou shalt talk of thy Tio
Pedro, and of the day I was dropped in his hand, and of the days that
went before. Thou canst talk now of the murder of the American, and of
the Señorita Herlinda too, and there will be no Pedro to chide thee. And
see,—” as the woman began some faint objection,—“I have all the pretty
things Pedro gave me, and money too; yes, more than thou wouldst think.
And thou shalt never miss thy uncle; thou shalt have them all, if thou
wilt but talk to the old women of things that happened here before the
time of the great sickness. But, Florencia, thou must tell them nothing.
Oh, if I could only run again in and out of the village huts as I used
to do!”
Florencia looked at the excited girl with a nod of intelligence. “Have
no fear,” she said; “it is not possible that Florencia knows not how to
manage her own tongue, though no one knows better than thyself it was
ever a quiet one. But it shall wag now, and not like the dog’s tail, in
mere idleness.”
Chinita laughed, then glancing around her warily, drew from her bosom a
small gold coin. She had evidently prepared herself for a chance meeting
with Florencia.
“Take it,” she said, “and go. Thou hast been here too long already;
and,” she added with the flush of red again tingeing her face, “talk and
gossip when the American is near. He must be sad,—it will cheer him to
hear the voices, even if he understands but little; and if by chance he
speaks to thee, why! thou shalt tell me what he says.”
Florencia had experienced one great surprise that morning, and here was
another; the first had awed, the second delighted her. Like all her race
she had the instincts of secrecy and intrigue, and suddenly the
opportunity to practise both were offered her. She looked at Chinita
with a glance of infinite cunning in her soft dark eyes; but the young
girl would not meet her gaze. “Go, go!” she said impatiently; “you have
been here too long. The Señora is coming—or is it Doña Feliz? Go! go, I
say!”
It was neither Doña Isabel nor Feliz, but only Chata, who entered with a
preoccupied air, scarcely noticing the woman who passed her on the
threshold. She did not speak, however, until Florencia had reluctantly
passed out of hearing; and then she cried eagerly, “Chinita! Chinita!
who is the stranger who stood with thee at the doorway? God bless us! I
thought I saw the ghost of the American we used to talk of; and but now
I met him below in the court. Who is he? What is he here for?”
“That remains to be seen,” answered Chinita, with an uneasy laugh. Her
hasty confidence in Florencia troubled her, and closed her lips toward
the friend for whom she had hitherto longed. “At least the stranger is
no ghost; yet how can we know that the man who was murdered here so many
years before was anything to him?”
“But I do know,” insisted Chata. “I had gone to the arbor, thinking thou
mightest be there, to break my fast. I was standing in the centre, with
my eyes turned toward this room, thinking I should see thee leave it,
and thinking too of the _niña_ Herlinda,—O Chinita! she is still so
beautiful,—when I heard a step behind me. It was a strange step, and I
turned quickly and saw the American looking at me as if he too believed
he saw a ghost. Was it not strange, Chinita? We looked at each other
quite steadily for many moments, then he said,—
“‘Pardon me, you are then the daughter of the administrador? You came
here yesterday?’
“I could scarcely make out his words, yet I understood what he said, and
I seemed to know that he had taken me for another,—perhaps for thee,
Chinita; and then again he said, ‘Pardon me! Pardon me!’ and we still
continued to look at each other; and I did not think how bold I must
appear until the other stranger, the young officer who loves Rosario,
stepped out of the room they have given him. I heard his spurs clank on
the pavement, and then I fled away to thee. But for the fright, I should
not have dared to come hither, Chinita. All yesterday my grandmother
kept me from thee. She said now thou art the child of Doña Isabel, and
that without leave I must not go to thee.”
“Chata, thou hast a poor spirit!” exclaimed Chinita, with some
severity,—though she remembered with impatient anger that Doña Isabel
had kept her in the garden at her side, on pretence of showing her the
strings of irregular pearls, which she should some day arrange in even
strands. Doña Isabel had made no promise, but Chinita could almost see
them in the future bedecking her own neck and arms. She had been
beguiled, even as Chata had been commanded, to keep apart from her old
playmate.
“There is a mystery in it all!” she exclaimed. “Though I am here with
Doña Isabel, I know not who I am. It is intolerable! Sometimes I fear I
am but her plaything, with no more right to her notice than had the fawn
I found on the river bank and petted, till it died from very heartbreak
because it longed so for the mountains and its kind. And so I long,
Chata. Ah, thou knowest not what it is to be a nameless wretch, to be
tossed from hand to hand, and have no share in the game but the dizzy
whirling through the air. Pshaw! I would rather be dashed to pieces
against the first wall than go through life with nothing but favor to
rely on. I want a name, a place, a right. I will have them: even you,
who are the daughter of the administrador, have those; and I—Well, I
will not be simply _Chinita_, whom Doña Isabel makes a lady to-day, who
was a child of the Madonna yesterday, and may be a beggar to-morrow.”
Chata had been leaning on the arm and pressing her head against the
shoulder of Chinita. She raised it now with a sharp low cry, and turned
away. Little guessed the impetuous, ambitious foundling how her words
tortured and taunted the other, who longed to cry out, “I too am no one!
I too am a stray, a waif, and if I know my father, know him only as a
terror,—a horror.” Her promise to Doña Rita silenced her. She felt there
was but one person in the world to whom she would break her promise,—the
pale, sweet-faced nun of the convent of El Toro. In her passionate,
bitter mood Chinita chilled and silenced her. She did not even tell her
that as she hastened from the arbor the American had caught the end of
her flying reboso, as if by an irresistible impulse, and cried: “I am
Ashley Ward! Ashley! Ashley! remember the name!”
Remember it! it seemed to Chata as if she had always known the man as
well as the name, which had ever before been to her the symbol of the
dead rather than of the living. That she should have seen the Señorita
Herlinda, whom she had always known to be alive, seemed more wonderful,
more incredible to her mind, than that the young man should have risen
before her to claim the name of the murdered foreigner. Now that he had
come, she seemed all her life to have been expecting him. She did not
see him again for days, but all that time the expression of his eyes
haunted her. She could not fathom it. She did not guess it had been but
a reflection of the surprise, yet conviction, in her own.
Chata did not again transgress the commands of Doña Feliz; nor did she
remain long enough with Chinita in her first visit to be tempted into
further confidence. Indeed, they parted with something like a quarrel,
as they had been used to do in their childhood’s days. Rosario’s name
had been mentioned, and Chinita had with some scorn commented both on
her sentimental air and the indifference of her lover.
“Did he love her at El Toro?” she asked with the laugh that was so
mocking. “He stood for an hour, you say, at the corner of the street
waiting for a glance from her; he wrote verses by day and sang them by
night beneath her window? Well, he stood from noon till night yesterday
with his eyes turned upward,—one would have thought he had never gazed
at anything lower than the sky; yet it was only for a glimpse of _my_
face, and a single glance from my eyes dazzled and blinded him. Thank
Heaven, he dare not tune a guitar beneath my windows for fear of Doña
Isabel, or I should be tormented with all the old rhymes changed from
Rosario to Chinita. Ah, there are likings and likings, and this pretty
soldier is one who would try them all!”
“Chinita,” cried Chata in indignation, “you are false, you are cruel!
Rosario has done nothing to you that you should torment her. I
understand nothing of such things as Rosario does; though I am her age,
she seems to be a woman while I am still a child. But she says she loves
Fernando, and for love a woman’s heart may break.”
Chata was thinking of the pale, sad nun; but Chinita threw herself into
a chair and broke into a peal of laughter. It rang through the silent
house, and startled Doña Isabel in the further chamber. She started
nervously and clasped her hands over her ears.
“What a strange child it is.” she murmured, “Ah, I should have loved her
if—” She glanced at a note she had just written. It was addressed to
Vicente Gonzales, and promised him a thousand mounted soldiers.
Doña Isabel made no idle promises, and she had counted well the cost
when she had thus irrevocably committed herself to the cause of the
Liberals. She had watched for years the course of events, and none saw
more clearly than she that the time for passiveness had gone. On every
hand there must necessarily be sacrifice. “That which goes not in sighs,
must in tears,” she said sententiously. “I like not the Indian Juarez,
yet his policy promises deliverance from the vampire that for
generations has grown strong and ever stronger, as it has drained the
very life of the nation.”
The knowledge that Gonzales was in El Toro enjoying the prestige of an
accidental victory, but with a force entirely insufficient to meet that
which Ramirez might at any day bring against him, had been the immediate
cause of her action. To reward Pedro with a service which should at once
remove him from her sight and fill his mind with new and absorbing
interests, were the reasons why he had been chosen to ride from rancho
to rancho secretly inciting the men to join the standard, which was to
be raised upon the morrow.
“Ah, this Ruiz is a poor tool!” muttered Doña Isabel, “yet for that
reason may be the more readily bought. He loves the daughter of my
administrador, and will do much to gain my good word. Rafael says he is
a brave soldier, if a false one; and there will be those with him who
will guard against treachery. He shall fulfil his empty offer to lead a
thousand men to Gonzales, and claim of Rafael the reward he sighs for.
Ah, there is the child’s laugh again,—I could almost fancy it in mockery
of me! Ah, this of patriot is a new _rôle_ for me, and tries my nerves.
Well, Chinita shall laugh while she can: if it is for long, it will
prove her none of the blood of Garcia. Was there ever a happy woman
among them?”
While Doña Isabel pondered thus, Chata in deep indignation had turned
from her whilom friend. She had been brought up among a people who in
matters of love held man excused and woman guilty in all cases of
inconstancy. “Farewell!” she exclaimed, “I will come no more to you who
are so cruel. Doña Isabel was right to part us; she has changed your
heart as she has your fortune. Ah!” she added bitterly, “all the world
is changed to me, and why not you?”
The grieved and imbittered girl went out so quickly that Chinita’s
answer did not reach her. As she passed through the corridor Chata
glanced down. The young officer stood there, as Chinita had described.
He would catch the first glimpse of her as she left her room. Chata
flushed in anger, yet tears of pity rose to her eyes. She was still a
child, yet her heart foretold what might be the agony of woman’s
slighted love.
Even so soon Chinita was laughing no longer; she had crouched forward
and sat with her face bent almost to her knees. “What have I done?” she
asked herself. “It is early morning still, and I have told a secret to a
fool, and offended her I should have trusted!”
She had eaten nothing; the excitement under which she had acted suddenly
expired, and she burst into sobs and tears. Doña Feliz coming in a few
minutes later, found her on her knees before the little image of her
patron saint, passionately vowing the gift of a silver _Christo_ in
return for the boon she craved.
“Go to the corridor, my child,” said Feliz pityingly. The girl was a
problem to her, which every day seemed more difficult of solution. “You
look weary and ill; but console yourself,—Pedro is safe. You will see
the good foster-father again, be assured.”
Chinita looked at her in astonishment. She had for the time forgotten
Pedro’s very existence. Doña Feliz discerned at once that she had
credited the girl with a sensibility to which she was a stranger. Five
minutes later she was quite certain of it, as Chinita sat on the
corridor, apparently equally unconscious of the impassioned glances of
Ruiz, or those of the invisible but infuriate Rosario, drawing the
threads of some dainty linen and singing,—
_Sale la Linda,
Sale la fea,
Sale el enano,
Con su galea._
“The beauty comes out,
The ugly one too;
Then comes the dwarf,
With a gay halloo.”
As unstudied and inconsequent as the meaningless words of the song
seemed the actions of the singer, but Feliz shook her head, and met Doña
Isabel with a face that was even more serious than its wont. The problem
became to her mind each day more complicated. Would the result be
bitterness, and that grief most dreaded by the proud heart of Doña
Isabel Garcia,—the grief and bitterness of shame?