“She has been to see you often, and will come again.”
“Did she say where I had been?”
“She said you had started to confessional, and I suppose the fever came upon you while you were on the way.”
The girl lay silent for a time. Finally tears gathered in her eyes. It was a good sign that the power of crying had returned to her; tears are a mark of humanity, and only they who are dehumanized or rendered outcasts by persecution or sorrow are unable to weep. Mrs. Rizal stooped and kissed the girl. It was the one act of sympathy she needed to break up the fountains of her heart, for it showed that she was not entirely abandoned, and Ambrosia wept unrestrainedly.
“You will be better now,” said Mrs. Rizal when the flood of tears had passed.
“Does—General Saguanaldo know?” asked Ambrosia.
“If he did, he would have come.” Again it was the wisest word that could have been spoken, simple and unlearned though it may have been, for it intimated that her lover had not ceased to care, and this was of all things the most consoling. Yet a moment after it occurred to Ambrosia that if Saguanaldo had desired to come and not been able, he, too, had been burdened and in trouble. Then it was, with a woman’s abnegation, Ambrosia thought of the woe of her dear one rather than of her own sorrow, and this, too, was an advantage to her.
“Are they having trouble at the front?” she asked.
“Yes,” Mrs. Rizal replied. “The friars have seized on the churches, the hospitals and convents, and now the American troops are maintaining them in possession of the property they hold. It is the same as though the Americans, after Saguanaldo had turned the city of Manila over to them, had turned against him and were making war on him and in favor of the friars.”
“Someone is behind this change,” declared the girl after a moment’s thought.