“For long months we searched far and wide for some traces of him, but in vain. The river and arroyos were dragged, the chapparal searched inch by inch, but there were no traces found. In my grief I thought I should die, but it was denied me. And now do you wonder at my sorrow? On this day, nineteen years ago, my husband was murdered; one year later, on the same day, your brother Felipe disappeared—perhaps met the same fate!” and she bowed her head upon her hands, while the hot, scalding tears trickled through her fingers.
The girl at her feet sat in silence, her dark eyes dimmed at the tragical tale she had just listened to. Her sorrow was less than that of her mother, for her brother she could not remember, and the father her eyes had never rested upon, seemed but in a remote degree associated with herself. It was a subject that her mother had ever avoided, and Luisa was too gay and light-hearted to press the topic; so it is not to be wondered at that she did not feel the intense grief that agitated the form of her mother.
No one who could have seen her then would have pronounced her other than beautiful. She was rather under the medium size, but so perfectly proportioned that she appeared taller. Her large, lustrous black eyes were shaded by lashes of the deepest jet, and her finely-arched eyebrows were of the same sable hue. Glossy black tresses were braided like a coronet around her finely-formed head, whence a mass of fine ringlets flowed over a neck and shoulders which would have been considered fair even in our land of blonde beauties, and in her sunny clime were deemed white as the newly-fallen snow. A stranger’s eye would detect and dwell upon the faintly dark shading on her upper lip, that in a youth might have been termed an incipient mustache. But is it a blemish? Her friends thought otherwise. It but added another attraction to her piquant beauty.
Her mother was slightly taller, but the same contour of face and great resemblance, although somewhat impaired by time and sorrow, showed that Senora Luzecita Canelo lived again in her daughter Luisa.
They were aroused by a light tap at the half-opened door, and glanced around.
“Well Josefa, what is it?” said Luisa.
The old nurse entered the room on tiptoe, as if fearful of disturbing the mistress, and whispered, in a low tone:
“It is a stranger, ’na Luisa, on particular business, he says, and—”
“Well, where is Sarguela; he attends to all such, as you know, Josefa,” interrupted the maiden, a little impatiently.
“Don Garcia is with him, but he says he must see the senora; that his business is for her ear alone,” hesitated Josefa.