Immediately after her return from Norfolk, in the interval before Lucian came, Garda sent for Adolfo Torres. When he appeared she begged him to do her a favor, namely, to leave Charleston for the present.
"Is it that you wish me to return to Gracias?" asked Adolfo. "The place is a desperation without you."
"You need not go to Gracias if you don't want to; but please go away from here. Go to the Indian River," she suggested, with a sudden inspiration.
"I will go to the Indian River certainly—if that is your wish," replied the Cuban; "though I do not know"—this he added rather longingly—"what harm I do here."
"No harm at all. But I want you to go." She smiled brightly, though there was also a good deal of sympathy in her eyes as she surveyed his lack-lustre countenance.
"That is enough—your wish. I go—I go at once." He took leave of her.
She called him back, and looked at him a moment. Then she said, "Yes, go. And I will write to you."
This was a great concession, Adolfo felt it to be such.
The letter was long in coming; and when it did come at last, it dealt him, like an actual hand, a prostrating blow. It was dated several days after that morning which had seen the early marriage in St. Michael's, and the signature, when his dazed eyes reached it, was one he did not know—Edgarda Spenser.
The Cuban had received this note at dusk. He went out and wandered about all night. At daylight he came in, dressed himself afresh and carefully, and had his boots polished—a process not so much a matter of course on the Indian River at that day as in some other localities. Next he said a prayer, on his knees, in his rough room in the house where he was lodged. Then he went out and asked the old hunter, his host, for the favor of the loan of one of his guns for the morning.