But once arrived there she was disappointed. They were old adobes, true enough, and the people who lived in them had the same dark, Spanish cast of face which she remembered of Antonio. Yet there the resemblance ended. This was the home of squalor, of poverty that was not self-respecting enough to be clean, and of an indolence which had brought about a wretched state of affairs.
“Oh! is this it? But it can’t be. Antonio’s ‘quarter’ was a splendid place. The old grandees lived there, keeping up a sort of court and all the customs of a hundred years ago. It was ‘a picture, a romance, a dream,’ he said. Of an evening he would describe it all to us at home till I felt as if it were the one spot in the world I most wished to see. But–this!”
“Turn not up your pretty nose, for ‘this,’ my dear little unenlightened maiden, is also a dream–a nightmare. Nevertheless, the very ground your lost hero boasted and embellished with his fancy. The more I hear of this versatile Antonio the greater becomes my longing to behold him. In any case, since we’re here, we must not go away without entering some of these shops. You shall buy a trinket or two and present one of them as a keepsake to this fine senor, when you find him. Oh! that I had your familiar knowledge of his features, this absent ‘grandee,’ that if by accident I met him I might know him on the instant. See. This ‘bazaar’ is somewhat tidier than its neighbors, as well as larger, and there are some really beautiful Navajo blankets in the window. Unfortunately the pocketbook of a reporter isn’t quite equal to more than a dozen of these, at fifty dollars apiece. Something more modest, Lady Jess, and I’ll oblige you!”
She looked up to protest and saw that he was teasing, and exclaimed, with an air of mock injury:
“Those or nothing! But when shall I learn to understand your jest from earnest?”
“When you produce me your Antonio!”
“Upon the instant, then,” she retorted, gayly.
Upon the instant, indeed, there were hurrying footsteps behind them, the sound of some one breathing rapidly and of angrily muttered sentences, that were a jumble of Spanish and English, and in a voice which made Jessica Trent start and turn aside, clutching her companion’s hand.
He turned, also, throwing his arm about her shoulders, lest the rush of the man approaching should force her from the narrow sidewalk. But she darted from him, straight into the path of this wild-looking person and seized him with both hands, while she cried out:
“It’s he! It is Antonio! I’ve found him–Antonio Bernal!”