"They are at their cards," she said, when she returned, "and Pieto is drunk; they will not disturb us," and then Teresa told her story.
"You said to-night that you saw the heart that died—for my heart died seventeen years ago when I buried my José. He was only five, but he never walked. He would just lie in the sun in his little wheeled cradle and look up at the sky and smile at me with his deep eyes and ask me things I could not tell him. Pieto, too, in those days was a good father and loved his little crippled son almost as much as I did. And then one day there was a jingling of harness and Queen Elene drove past our little house, that lay up on the cliff road towards Logillo. She ordered her postilions to stop and called me to the side of the carriage. She had the sweetest smile that ever told of a perfect soul, and tender eyes into which came a mist when I answered her questions about little José.
"And then she got down and knelt in the dust beside the cradle, and the little man looked at her with his great wondering eyes, and put up his thin little hand to touch the glittering ornaments at the Queen's neck. And after that she often drove that way, and would sit with him. Once she told me of her own little child, a maid—but I think she thought it unkind to speak of her own blessings in the face of my sorrow, for she only spoke of you that once."
Teresa held out her hand and took up the ring that she had laid down on the tray.
"This was what he admired more than anything, and your mother would take it from her finger and let him play with it, flashing it back and forth in the sunlight. The day before he died she had lent it to him and he had gone to sleep still holding it. The Queen would not awake him, and in the night he died. When, afterwards, I returned it to the Queen, she wept; she would have had me keep it, but it was, she said, the first gift your father had given her. That is my story—and you, Princess? I do not want to know how you escaped the fate of that devilish work at the Palace. I know only, that you are here and that I ask nothing better than to die for you, for the sake of your sainted mother, and for the joy she brought into my boy's life."
Galva, her eyes moist with tears, bent and kissed the wrinkled brow.
"And I, Teresa, want you to live. I think I want you always to be with me, to talk to me about my mother."
Teresa shook her head. "I am not worthy," she said. "After José was taken from us, Pieto took to the drink, and I—I did not care what happened. We took service with Gabriel Dasso—it was rumoured that his was the hand that killed the Queen. We hoped to gain evidence that it was so, and we would have poisoned him. But we learnt nothing. We obeyed him and did his dirty work, sinking lower and lower until we forgot why we had entered his service. I am not worthy, Princess, to touch the sole of your shoe."
Galva rose.
"I won't write the letter till this afternoon, Teresa. You can get it through to Corbo for me?"