“More so to die,” she whispered, with a new note of timidity. “It is frightful. Be cautious, Don Juan, for the love of God, because I could not———”
We stopped. La Chica, silent, as if exhausted, drooped lamentably, with her shoulder against the wall, by Seraphina’s door; and the pure crystalline sound of the fountain below, enveloping the parting pause, seemed to wind its coldness round my heart.
“Poor Don Carlos!” she said. “I had a great affection for him. I was afraid they would want me to marry him. He loved your sister.”
“He never told her,” I murmured. “I wonder if she ever guessed.”
“He was poor, homeless, ill already, in a foreign land.”
“We all loved him at home,” I said.
“He never asked her,” she breathed out. “And, perhaps—but he never asked her.”
“I have no more force,” sighed La Chica, suddenly, and sank down at the foot of the wall, putting the candlesticks on the floor.
“You have been very good to him,” I said; “only he need not have demanded this from you. Of course, I understood perfectly.... I hope you understand, too, that I———”
“Señor, my cousin,” she flashed out suddenly, “do you think that I would have consented only from my affection for him?”