“You must want to wash your hands and face and brush the dust of the road from your dress and rest for a while. I will leave you now. Call the chambermaid if you should require anything; here every one speaks a little Spanish.”
“Good-by,” she answered mechanically.
When the noise made by the closing of the door announced to Lucía that she was alone, and she cast her eyes around this strange room, dimly illumined by the light of the candles, the excitement and bewilderment she had felt during the journey vanished; she called to mind her little room at Leon, simple but dainty as a silver cup, with its holy-water font, its saint, its boxes of mignonette, its work-table, its capacious cedar wardrobe filled with freshly ironed linen. She thought, too, of her father, of Carmela and Rosarito, of all the sweet past. Then sadness overpowered her; fears, vague but none the less real, assailed her; the position in which she found herself seemed to her strange and alarming: the present looked threatening, the future dark. She sank into an easy-chair and gazed fixedly at the light of the candles with the abstracted look of one lost in deep and painful meditation.
CHAPTER V.
An hour, or perhaps an hour and a half, might have passed when Lucía heard a knock at the door of her room, and opening it she found herself face to face with her companion and protector, who gave proof, by his white cuffs and some slight changes which he had made in his dress, of having paid that minute attention to the business of the toilet which is a part of the religion of our age. He entered, and without seating himself, held out to Lucía his pocket-book, filled with money.
“You have here,” he said, “money enough for any occasion that may arise until your husband joins you. As the trains are apt to be delayed at this season, I do not think he will be here before morning, but even if he should not arrive for a week, or even a month, there is enough to last you till then.”
Lucía looked at him as if she had not understood his meaning, without making any motion to take the pocket-book. He slipped it into her palm.
“I am obliged to go out now, to attend to some business,” he said; “after which I will take the first train for Paris. Good-by, Señora,” he ended ceremoniously, taking two steps toward the door.
Then, grasping his meaning, the young girl, with pale and troubled countenance, caught him by the sleeve of his overcoat, exclaiming:
“What—what do you mean? What are you saying about the train?”