“Let me pass you, Rachela. What is the matter with my mother?”
The woman was absorbed in her supplications, and Antonia opened the door. Isabel followed her. They found themselves in the the{sic} presence of an angry sorrow that appalled them. The Senora had torn her lace mantilla into shreds, and they were scattered over the room as she had flung them from her hands in her frantic walk about it. The large shell comb that confined her hair was trodden to pieces, and its long coils had fallen about her face and shoulders. Her bracelets, her chain of gold, her brooch and rings were scattered on the floor, and she was standing in the centre of it, like an enraged creature; tearing her handkerchief into strips, as an emphasis to her passionate denunciations.
“It serves him right! JESUS! MARIA! JOSEPH! It serves him right! He must carry arms! HE, TOO! when it was forbidden! I am glad he is arrested! Oh, Roberto! Roberto!”
“Patience, my daughter! This is the hand of God. What can you do but submit?”
“What is it, mi madre?” and Isabel put her arms around her mother with the words mi madre. “Tell Isabel your sorrow.”
“Your father is arrested—taken to the Alamo—he will be sent to the mines. I told him so! I told him so! He would not listen to me! How wicked he has been!”
“What has my father done, Fray Ignatius? Why have they arrested him?”
The priest turned to Antonia with a cold face. He did not like her. He felt that she did not believe in him.
“Senorita, he has committed a treason. A good citizen obeys the law; Senor Worth has defied it.”
“Pardon, father, I cannot believe it.”