This was but sorry comfort, waiting for the bride to become a widow; but, alas, I had no better! Besides it had cost me a heavy sum to obtain, and accordingly I prized it the more highly.
If my anxieties were acute, apparently Don Lopez's mind was not in a state of perfect serenity. He stormed and raved at everybody and everything. He saw, or, what was pretty much the same thing, he fancied he saw, a plot in the whole business, and swore he would bring the vengeance of the Holy Office upon everybody concerned in it. In this blessed frame of mind the departure of the newly wedded pair took place in spite of all my entreaties; Don Lopez drove away with his young bride,—the last I beheld of her was a white hand waving a handkerchief from the window of the carriage. I looked, and—she was gone!
If some were kind-hearted enough to pity me, the large majority of the company felt very differently, and bore anything but friendly feelings to one who had marred the festivities and cut short—Heaven could only tell by what number of days—the eating, dancing, singing, and merriment.
The old ladies were peculiarly severe in their comments, averring that no well-bred man would have thought of interfering with a marriage. It was quite time enough to talk of his passion when the others were six or eight months married!
Of the younger ladies, a few condoled with me, praised my heroism and my constancy, and threw out sly hints that when I tried my luck next, fortune might possibly be more generous to me. Don Estaban himself appeared to sympathize sincerely with my sorrow, and evinced the warmest sense of gratitude for the past. Even the Fra tried a little good-nature; but it sat ill upon him, and it was easy to see that he entertained a great mistrust of me.
From the brief experience of what I suffered in these few days, I am decidedly of opinion that rich men are far more impatient under reverses and disappointments than poor ones! It was a marvellous change for one like me, whose earlier years, it is unnecessary to remind the reader, were not passed in the lap of that comfortable wet nurse called “affluence;” and yet with all this brilliant present and still more fascinating future, at the very first instance of an opposition to my will, I grew sad, dispirited, and morose. I should have been very angry with myself for my ingratitude, but that I set it all down to the score of love; and so I went about the house, visiting each room where Donna Maria used to sit, reading her books, gazing at her picture, and feeding my mind with a hundred fancies which the next moment of thought told me were now impossible.
Don Estaban, whose grief for the loss of his daughter was in a manner divided with mine, would not suffer me to leave him; and although the place itself served to keep open the wound of my regret, and the Fra's presence was anything but conciliatory, I passed several days at the villa.
It would have been the greatest relief to me could I have persuaded myself to be candid with Don Estaban, and told him frankly the true story of my life. I felt that all the consolations which he offered me were of no avail, simply because I had misled him! The ingenious tissue of fiction in which I enveloped myself was a web so thin that it tore whenever I stirred, and my whole time was spent, as it were, in darning, patching, and piecing the frail garment with which I covered my nakedness.
A dozen times every day I jumped up, determined to reveal my humble history; but as regularly did a sentiment of false shame hold me back, and a dread of old Fra Miguel's malicious leer, should he hear the story. Another, and a strange feeling, too, influenced me. My imaginary rank, birth, and station had, from the mere force of repetition, grown to be a portion of myself. I had played the part with such applause before the world that I could not find in my heart to retire behind the scenes and resume the humble dress of my real condition.
By way of distracting my gloomy thoughts, I made little excursions in the surrounding country, in one of which I contrived to revisit the “placer,” and carry away all the treasure which I had left behind me. This was much more considerable than I had at first believed, the gems being of a size and beauty far beyond any I had ever seen before; while the gold, in actual coined money, amounted to a large sum.