"Dios!" gasped Don Roberto. "Dios!" But there was no anger in his voice. His eyes rolled from Magdaléna to the window and back again. Finally he said,—
"He no come back, then?"
"He is coming back in six weeks."
Don Roberto drew a long breath and seemed to recover himself.
"Then si he no break the engagement, he feel glad si it is make again. You marry him the day after he come back. I fixit that."
"No power on earth can make me marry him."
Her father searched her countenance. He knew her character. Did it not have that iron of New England in it for which he would have sold his birthright? He might turn her into the street, and it would avail him nothing. Again his features relaxed, this time not with surprise and consternation, but with abject fear. He shuddered from head to foot; then his hands shot up to receive his face. He groaned and rocked from side to side.
Magdaléna was aghast. What feeling was alive in her united in filial tenderness. She went to him and put her hands uncertainly about his head, then stroked his hair awkwardly: she was little used to endearments.
"I never thought—" she stammered. "I never thought—"
"Thirty years I work like the slave, and now all going! Eeram, he have the death-tick in him: I hear! And now I no go to have the son, and I go to die in the streets like the others; with no one cents! Ay! yi! ay! yi!"