"It may be so. I do not wish to appear sceptical, but I think you are mistaken there. However, that is not our question. I say, you saved Doña Hermosa from a frightful death. At the first impulse, yielding to your feelings of pride, you left her abruptly, determined to return to the desert, never again to see the face of her who would have overwhelmed you with gratitude."
Don Fernando, astonished and galled at finding his feelings so well understood, briskly interrupted the speaker.
"To our business, if it so please you, caballero," he said sharply; "it is better to begin your explanation at once than launch out into suppositions which may be very ingenious, but have the one fault of being erroneous."
"Look, Don Fernando," replied the other, "you will try in vain to lead me on a false trail; so all denial is useless. You are young and handsome. Passing your life among savages, you are utterly ignorant of the great key to human passions. You could not see Doña Hermosa with impunity. As soon as you saw her, your heart trembled; new ideas developed themselves; and, forgetting all else, despising every other consideration, you have retained only one object, one desire,—that of seeing this girl, who appeared to you as a dream, and brought trouble into a heart so calm before. You have longed to see her, if only for a minute—for a second."
"You are right," cried Don Fernando, carried away by the force of truth; "I feel all you describe. I would joyfully give my life to see but a corner of her rebozo (veil). But why is it so? I seek in vain to understand it."
"It is what you would never understand if I did not come to your aid. A man brought up like you, beyond the pale of social considerations,—whose life as yet has only been one long strife with the imperious necessity of each day; who has never employed his physical powers except in the cares of the chase or the struggles of war,—your moral faculties lay dormant within you; you were ignorant of their power. Love brought about the transformation, the effects of which are now confounding you. You love Doña Hermosa."
"Do you think so?" said he simply. "Is this what is called love? In that case," he added, speaking more to himself than to Don Estevan, "its pains are cruel."
The latter looked at him with a mingling of pity and sorrow, and continued:
"I followed you last night because your actions seemed suspicious, and a vague fear led me to distrust you. Concealed in a bush only a yard or two from the spot where you were talking to the Tigercat, I overheard all you said. I changed my opinion of you; I recognised—forgive me if I speak frankly—that you were better than report would make you, and that it would be wrong to take you for such a man as the one you spoke to. The peremptory manner with which you repulsed his insinuations proved that you have a heart. Upon that I determined to support you in the strife for which you are preparing against this man, who has ever been your evil genius, and whose pernicious influence has so malignly brooded over your youth. These are the reasons why I have spoken thus; these the reasons why I brought you here for an explanation. Now, here is my hand; will you take it? It is that of a friend and brother."
Don Fernando rose, and eagerly seizing the hand so frankly held out to him, pressed it again and again.