His usual stern gravity had given place in the last few hours to a look soft, pleasant, and very human. If she had looked into his eyes she might have read there both sympathy and understanding. But softness in him just then merely added to her fear. Following downhill, too, she watched him closely with dark, frightened eyes. In the past his strong face and lithe figure had aroused in her a certain admiration, but now they inspired revulsion. A lost spirit descending into Hades could not have battled more fiercely than did she descending the interminable staircases, and the struggle left her so pale and exhausted that Sebastien remarked upon it when they rode out at last on the valley floor.
“You are tired? We shall soon be there.”
That started her again upon a conflict which continued all the way across the pastures to the hacienda gates and reached its climax when she entered her room—not the one she had occupied before, but that which had chambered before her the line of wives and mothers which began with the Aztec bride of Flores Rocha, the conquistador. In that long line the room may have harbored a bride fully as unhappy, but none more mutinous than its present occupant.
“The señora is fatigued. She will have the meal served in her room.” Sebastien’s quiet order had dispersed the brown maids who flocked about her like cooing pigeons with greetings and offers of service. Unaware that he would observe it himself, she sprang out of her chair and ran a few steps toward the barred window when a tap sounded upon her door. In her relief when it proved to be only Roberta, she pulled the child in to her bosom.
“It is thee, niña! Oh! I had thought—what is this?”
Her sudden flush betrayed her recognition of Seyd’s writing on the package the girl held out. In the few seconds she stood hesitating her changing expression revealed the struggle between her misery and her sense of wifely honor. The issue was not long in doubt, for, suddenly murmuring “’Twill do no harm to read it,” she ripped off the cover.
While she read the blush faded. At the end her low distressed cry, “Francesca, see what thy hasty pride has done! A little patience would have saved thy happiness and his!” told of the deep impression. Sinking into a chair, she was beginning to read it again when the door trembled under a heavier rap.
Thrusting the letter into her bosom, she leaped up, under the urge of the same wild instinct to escape, retreated toward the window, and so stood, with Roberta tightly held against her skirts. Seconds passed before she managed a tremulous “Enter!” and the face she turned to Sebastien presented such a passion of fear, revulsion, and despair that he stopped and stood gazing at her from the door. If surprised, his look, however, was still kind. He even smiled. Not until, retreating as he came forward, she stopped only with her back against the wall, Roberta still between them, did his smile give way to sudden dark offense.
“Are you ill?” He spoke sharply. “Or is this the usual way of a bride? If I were a tiger and you alone in the jungle ’twould be impossible to show more fear.”
“I wish you were!” The confession burst out of her miserable fear. “’Twere preferable a thousand times! Oh, why did I do it—commit this great wrong? Love is, can be, the only cause for marriage, but in my hasty pride I sought only revenge—on him. Oh, ’twas a sin—a sin against you, Sebastien, who have always been so kind. Somewhere there must have been a woman who would have borne you children out of her love. And now—I have not only sealed my own misery, but also yours. For, though I do not, never can love you, I am—your wife.”