CHAPTER VI
NIGHT VISIONS
When the tension of waiting was becoming intolerable, and Mrs. Trent was already rising to seek her daughter, Jessica reappeared in the doorway. Her white face and frightened eyes told her story without words, but her mother forced herself to ask:
“Did you find it, darling?”
“Mother, it is gone!”
“Gone!”
“Gone. Yet it was only that dear, last day when he was with us, in the morning, before he set out for the mines, that he showed it to me, safe and sound in its place. He was to tell you, too, that night–but––”
“It was that, then, which was on his mind, and I could not understand. I–Antonio Bernal, he entrusted you and you must know; where is that missing deed?”
“Deed, senora? This day, just ended, is it not that I have been over all the records and there is none of any deed to Sobrante later than my own–or that proves my claim. In truth, the honorable Dona Gabriella is right, indeed. I was the trusted friend of the dead senor, and if any such precious document existed, would I not have known it? Si. What I do know is the worry, the trouble, the impossibility of such a paper broke the senor’s heart. It does not exist. Sobrante is mine. He knew that this was so–I had often spoken––”
The untruth he was about to utter did not pass his lips. There was that in the white face of Gabriella Trent which arrested his words, as, clasping her boy in her arms, she glided into the darkened hall and entered her own rooms beyond.