"They come very seldom now," pursued the old woman, not hearing or not comprehending. "It is dull, you understand. You, Sir, are Don Eugenio, are you not?" She nodded palsywise toward the white bed, where a broken guitar lay between two baskets of withered flowers.
"I was to tell you——" She broke off and lifted a hand half-way to her brow, but let it drop. "I was to tell you, if you came, that her letter was true, and always the lamp had been lit for you only. It burns still, you see. She loved you, my little one did; and she was good—always, though she laughed, she was good."
Fuentes stepped to the bed and took the guitar in his hands. Some blow had broken in the sounding-board, and one of the strings had snapped.
"There is no blood upon it," went on the old woman in the same tone that seemed pitilessly striving not to hurt. "The little one scarcely bled at all. But Don Diego struck hard, and somehow the guitar was broken, yet it may have been with her elbow as she fell. It was not treachery, you understand. At first she believed that in his jealousy he meant to betray you, but he meant only to murder. And she, discovering this, dressed herself in your clothes and took your place in the line that night: I heard her playing down the stairs: they were all playing 'My love, she lives in Salamanca'—that was the tune—your own tune, Don Eugenio—and she, with her mask on, singing bravely, the third in the line. She was short, you remember—oh, perhaps a head and shoulders shorter than you!—but Don Diego, outside the door in the darkness, could not see well, or maybe he was misled by your guitar. And, afterwards, Don Sebastian ran him through. They brought her upstairs to me and laid her on the bed. She was breathing yet, but for a very little while: and I was to tell you—I was to tell you——" She broke off again, seeking to remember.
"Was it something about the lamp, Doña Isabel?"
"Yes, that was it—but I have told you already, eh? Only for you she had ever lit it: for years, yet always and only for you...."
He crept past me, the guitar beneath his arm, and I followed. He went like a blind man, groping between the stair-rail and the wall.
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