Stronghand, after a few minutes, which seemed to last an age, rose, seized his rifle, went up to his horse, saddled it, mounted, and said to Don Ruiz, who followed all his movements with anxious curiosity—
"Wait for me, however long my absence may be; do not stir from here till I return."
Then, without waiting for the young man's answer, he bent lightly over his horse's neck, and started at a gallop. Don Ruiz watched the black outline, as it disappeared in the gloom; he listened to the horse's footfalls so long as he could hear them, and then turned back and seated himself pensively at the fire, and looked with tearful eyes at his sleeping sister.
"Poor Marianita!" he murmured, with a heart-rending outburst of pity.
He bowed his head on his chest, and with pale and gloomy face awaited the return of Stronghand—a return which, in his heart, he doubted, although, with the obstinacy of desperate men, who try to deceive themselves by making excuses whose falsehood they know, he sought to prove its certainty.
We will take advantage of this delay in our narrative to trace rapidly the portraits of Don Ruiz de Moguer and his sister Marianita. We will begin with the young lady, through politeness.
Doña Mariana—or rather Marianita, as she was generally called at the convent, and by her family—was a charming girl scarce sixteen, graceful in her movements, and with black lustrous eyes. Her hair had the bluish tinge of the raven's wing; her skin, the warm and gilded hues of the sun of her country; her glance, half veiled by her long brown eyelashes, was ardent; her straight nose, with its pink flexible nostrils, was delicious; her laughing mouth, with its bright red lips, gave her face an expression of simple, ignorant candour. Her movements, soft and indolent, had that indescribable languor and serpentine undulation alone possessed in so eminent a degree by the women of Lima and Mexico, those daughters of the sun in whose veins flows the molten lava of the volcanoes, instead of blood. In a word, she was a Spanish girl from head to foot—but Andalusian before all. Hers was an ardent, wild, jealous, passionate, and excessively superstitious nature. But this lovely, splendid statue still wanted the divine spark. Doña Mariana did not know herself; her heart had not yet spoken; she was as yet but a delicious child, whom the fiery breath of love would convert into an adorable woman.
Physically, Don Ruiz was, as a man, the same his sister was a woman. He was a thorough gentleman, and scarce four years older than Doña Mariana. He was tall and well built; but his elegant and aristocratic form denoted great personal strength. His regular features—too regular perhaps, for a man—bore an unmistakable stamp of distinction; his black eye had a frank and confident look; his mouth, which was rather large, but adorned with splendid teeth, and fringed by a fine brown moustache, coquettishly turned up, still retained the joyous, careless smile of youth; his face displayed loyalty, gentleness, and bravery carried to temerity;—in a word, all his features offered the most perfect type of a true-blooded gentleman.
Brother and sister, who, with the exception of a few almost imperceptible variations, had the most perfect physical likeness, also resembled each other morally. Both were equally ignorant of things of the world. With their pure and innocent hearts they loved each other with the holiest of all loves, fraternal affection, and only lived through and for each other.
Hence, Doña Mariana had felt a great delight and great impatience to quit the convent, when Don Ruiz, in obedience to his father's commands, came to fetch her from the Rosario. This impatience obliged Don Ruiz not to consent to wait for an escort on his homeward journey, for fear of vexing his sister. It was an imprudence that caused the misfortunes we have already described, and for which, now they had arrived, Don Ruiz reproached himself bitterly. He cursed the weakness that had made him yield to the whims of a girl, and accused himself of being, through his weakness, the sole cause of the frightful dangers from which she had only escaped by a miracle, and of those no less terrible, which, doubtless, still threatened her on the hundred and odd leagues they had still to go before reaching the hacienda del Toro, where dwelt her father, Don Hernando de Moguer.