“Ay, that we did!” laughed Sayosa, “and so thoroughly that they will rest satisfied for a year to come. But, dear Carlita, you must change your clothes. It is getting chilly,” he added, as they entered the house.
“Santissima Virgin, she is all wet! Did you fall into the arroyo, nina?” anxiously queried Ventura, for the first time noting the condition of his daughter.
“No, not that, uncle, but worse,” returned Marcos. “Come out of doors and I will tell you all.”
In a few words he narrated the insult given by Estevan Despierto, the duel, and then his dastardly conduct to Carlita, with the assault from which she had just been delivered; for, from the peculiarity mentioned by Carlita, he had recognized Despierto as the villain. The blue spot, left by a pistol-shot that had been discharged so close to his face that the burnt powder had penetrated the skin, was an indelible brand.
“Madre de Soledad! and I so near!” murmured the father. “So near, and not know of my child’s danger! But he did not—you saved her from all harm?”
“Excepting a bad affright.”
“Thank God it was you. But listen. My Carlita is beautiful and good—even a father may say that—and she loves you, better far than life itself. And you—can you, do you love her?” anxiously asked Ventura.
“Yes; I do, I will love her, best of all!” exclaimed Marcos, but there was a remonstrance at his heart; the bright, beautiful face of Luisa Canelo was there, and seemed to reproach him for the words.
“I hoped so—I knew so; and I am glad. I am an old man, Marcos, and, as you know, very poor. But you saved my daughter; she who looks at me with her mother’s eyes, and I shall not forget it. Listen. I can not live much longer; I feel that I must soon die, although it is sorrow and care—remorse, not age, that has made me what I am. I am not much over fifty years of age, but I look nearer a hundred. You wonder, but it is true. And when I die—after I am dead, you will be rich. Yes, rich as a prince—a prince, Marcos!”
“Never mind that now, uncle; we will talk it over some other time. Let us return to the jacale,” soothingly replied Sayosa, as he took the old man’s arm, thinking that the tale of Carlita’s peril had shocked his brain; for the neighbors all called him “crazy Ventura,” and the youth partially shared their belief that the old man was of unsound mind.