“There stands the old man that will wed my cousin.”
“Mention not her name,” said General del Torre——
“I would kill him first, but that his old blood dare not spill itself for her.”
“Mention not her name,” said del Torre——. Then Ramon’s voice hissed louder.
“My cousin Dolores de Luna that has been my mistress——”
That night a Jesuit priest, leaving the King’s House, where he had confessed Dolores, ran hastily to the Archbishop’s. While he was there, another frightened messenger brought the news that Don Sebastian and his nephew had been fighting on Calvareo. But Jacinta, crying, brought the news to the Countess earlier, how Don Sebastian and Don Ramon at last had met, and how the nephew lay full of wounds upon the Calvary, literally cut in pieces, killed at his own uncle’s hands.
XI.
Dolores spent the night before the wedding kneeling in the little chapel of her dwelling. So we read that Eastern Catholics “lay all that night in the form of a cross.” She was praying for her husband that had been to be—perhaps praying that he might be still, praying for light to see if there were sin in it. Perhaps she had remorses of her own. She had known the dead man he had killed as a boy, bold, reckless, wild; I suppose she had looked at him once or twice. A Southern maiden’s glances return to torture her when they have led to blood; prudent maids of other climes are chary of them for tradition of some such reason.
Dolores never wept, but knelt there, dry-eyed, praying. In intervals she thought, “Would he be well enough to come?” as she knew that he was gravely wounded; but somehow she felt sure he would; and that if this marriage-bond were sin, he would venture it for her sake. A woman’s conscience rules her heart, even in Spain; but a man, even Roman Catholic, will risk his own perdition to save her sorrow, or that no sin be hers. She must save him, she must be the judge. And sunrise found her pale but decided. Then she called Jacinta to her side, and asked her if she had carried to her husband (so she called him) her note.
Jacinta looked at her fiercely; but at the word “Husband,” started. Then she said she had torn it up.