A Bitter Heritage: A Modern Story of Love and Adventure

by John Bloundelle-Burton

But Paz only gave him now that look which he had given before, while he seemed at the same time to be struggling with that bleating laugh of his--the laugh which would surely have betrayed his presence.

"Come," he said, "I put you in big room of all. Old man Ritherdon call it guest room. Sebastian born there."

"Was he?" Julian asked in a whisper, "was he? Was he born there?"

"He born there. Come."

So, doubtless, the half-caste believed--since who in all Honduras disputed it! Who--except Julian himself, and, perhaps, the woman he loved; perhaps, too, her father.

Yet, the information that he was now being led to the room in which he felt sure that it was he who had been born and not the other, filled him with a kind of mystic, weird feeling as they crept along side by side towards it. For the first time since he had come to Desolada, he was about to visit the spot in which he had been given birth--the spot in which his mother had died; the spot wherein he had been stolen from that dying mother's side by his uncle.

Thinking thus, as they approached the door, he wondered, too, if by his presence in that room any inspiration would come to him as to how this other man had been made to supersede him, to appear as himself in the eyes of the little world in which he moved and lived. A man received as being what he was not, without question and with his claim undisputed.

"Go in," Paz whispered now, as he turned the handle. "Go in. From the window you see all that pass--if anything pass. Or you easy get on balcony. Your room there to right, hers there to left. If she go from one to other--then--you surely see."

"You will not accompany me?" Julian asked, wondering for the moment if there was treachery lurking in the man's determination to leave him at so critical a time; wondering, too, if, after all, he was about to warn the woman whom he, Julian, now sought to entrap in some nefarious midnight proceeding, of her danger. Yet, he argued with himself, that must be impossible. If he intended to do that, would he have divulged how Zara had changed one dish of food for another, so that he who set the trap had himself been caught in it; would he have given him so real a sign as to what use the phial had been put to as by placing it, empty, in his hands?

And, even though now Paz should meditate treachery--as, in truth, he did not believe he meditated it--still he cared nothing. What he had resolved to do he would do. What he had begun he would go on with. Now--at once--this very night!