"Good, we have reached the point I have been aiming at so long. Now listen to me. I told you, I think, that on her arrival in Mexico, Doña Anita was taken by Don Sebastian to the Convent of the Bernardines?"
"Yes! I fancy I can remember your saying so."
"Very good. Doña Anita was received with open arms by the good nuns who had educated her. The young lady, on finding herself again among the companions of her childhood, treated with kind and intelligent care, wandering unrestrained beneath the lofty trees that had sheltered her early years, gradually felt calmness returning to her mind; her grief by degrees gave way to a gentle melancholy; her ideas, overthrown by a frightful catastrophe, regained their balance; in short, the madness which had spread its black wings over her brain was driven away by the soft caresses of the nuns, and soon entirely disappeared."
"So, then," Don Martial exclaimed, "she has regained her reason?"
"I will not venture to assert that, for she is still insane in the opinion of everybody."
"But in that case——," the Tigrero said in a panting voice.
"In that case," the capataz continued, purposely laying a stress on every word, while fixing a magnetic glance on the Tigrero, "as all the world believes it, it must be so till the contrary is proved."
"But how did you learn all these details?"
"In the most simple manner. My master, Don Sebastian, has sent me several times to the convent with messages, and chance decreed that I recognized in the sister porter a relation of mine, whom I thought dead long ago. The worthy woman, in her delight, and perhaps, too, to make up for the long silence she is compelled to maintain, tells me whenever she sees me all that is said and done in the convent, and there is a good deal to learn from the conversation of a nun. She takes a good deal of interest in me, and as I am fond of her too, I listen to her with pleasure. Now, do you understand?"
"Oh! go on. Go on!"