‘I’m not! I’m not! I’m as unhappy as I can be! I wish I had never consented to give up my poor Henri! I dream of him every night!’
But at that confession, her mother’s attempt at consolation changed to righteous scorn.
‘Then you must be the wickedest girl alive, Maraquita! Dreaming of any man but your husband, and not married a month yet! You ought to be ashamed to mention such a thing, even to your mother! And that wretched low-born overseer too—a half-caste Spaniard, with neither birth nor money. I am utterly surprised at you!’
‘Mamma, you sha’n’t abuse him! He may be everything you say, but he’s gloriously handsome; and he loved me, and I ought to have married him! Why didn’t you manage it some way? You knew all about us, and you could have persuaded papa to settle something on him, and let us live with you at Beauregard, and then it would have been all right, and I should have been much happier there with him and my poor little baby—’
‘Maraquita! are you mad?’ cried her mother, clapping her hand before her daughter’s mouth; ‘or do you want every official in Government House to hear your shameful secret? Good heavens, it is enough to make me regret I ever interfered to save you from your own folly! If you confess the truth now, you will make matters a thousand times worse than if you had made the low marriage you seem to hanker after. It would be a nice scandal for the island, to hear that the Governor had repudiated you on account of your former light conduct! Then you would lose everything—reputation, position, and wealth, and gain nothing in exchange.’
‘I could go to Henri,’ said Maraquita doggedly, for she possessed one of those persistent natures that can work themselves up into a belief, and she was working herself up to believe that she was still passionately in love with De Courcelles, and ready to sacrifice everything for him.
‘That you certainly could not,’ returned Mrs Courtney, determined to cut her folly in the bud, ‘for he is not in San Diego.’
‘Where is he then?’ exclaimed Quita, raising herself from the sofa cushion.
‘He has gone to America,’ replied her mother, ignoring her regard for truth so long as she drove this nonsense out of Maraquita’s mind.
‘To America!’ repeated the girl. ‘Oh, why did he go there? What is he going to do?’