Poor thing! She could not live to see her so. The camphor-bottle, the close, dark room, and the Frenchy novels were too much for her; and before the spring had brought any flowers to strew on her grave, they had laid her in a darker, closer room than she had yet been in. Her husband and Regina followed the coffin, dressed in deep mourning; and Regina's face, as well as Paul's, was paler and sadder by a good many shades than usual.
Meanwhile, letters passed frequently between Paul and his friend and brother-in-law; and one day, when the roses and lilacs that bordered the lawn were shedding fragrance and beauty together over the old homestead-grounds, Paul announced to his sister-in-law that he would accompany her on her journey to New Mexico.
How the wind of the plains through Paul's hair made it look more than ever like a lion's mane! and how like the Paul of long ago he looked, mounted on his fiery black horse! Something like pity for him sometimes stole into Regina's heart; but she would sneer at herself for the feeling. "Did he pity me when I came home broken-hearted—repentant?"
The long hours of their rest—for the colonel had seen to it that his wife had not to travel in the plebeian stage, but was furnished train and escort at Fort Leavenworth—she beguiled with telling, bit by bit, the story of her acquaintance with Manuela, who had found her way to the fort on the Rio Pecos, one day, where they had been stationed. Regina had been captivated at once by the girl's gentle face and soft black eyes; and when, after an acquaintance of some weeks, she surmised that the girl was looking for the man who had once loved and then, unaccountably, deserted her, she felt only pity for one who could so unselfishly and devotedly love any man as to give up home and friends, and wander through what must seem the wide world to this poor girl, in search of him. That the man was Paul, she felt quite sure; though she had never expressed the least suspicion of this to the colonel.
This much only could Paul learn from his sister-in-law; and that she knew, even now, where the girl could be found; further than this she would not say; would not tell him that Manuela had lived in her own household, half as domestic, half as companion; that she had been induced to this by the vague hope that while with Americans she might more easily learn of those who arrived, or returned, from the States to the Territories; that on leaving Santa Fé she had exacted a promise from the girl to remain in the colonel's quarters and employ until she should send her permission to leave her post.
And so they reached Santa Fé—Paul hopeful and expectant as a young bridegroom; Regina calm and thoughtful, but trying to look cheerful when she knew of Paul's eyes resting on her; when unobserved, the dreary, despairing look crept back into her eyes, and her face, white as marble, grew rigid as the face of a statue. When the cluster of square, low-built adobe houses, called Santa Fé, rose up before them, Paul could hardly restrain his impatience; but he had promised to be guided in all things by his sister-in-law, and he had now to abide by her decisions. "It would be painful and embarrassing to have any one, even her own brother-in-law, present at her first meeting with the colonel," she said, and therefore requested Paul to remain over night in Santa Fé, and ride over in the morning to where Fort Marcy lay, on the low rise of the hills bordering the plain.
Since Regina so wished it, let the meeting between herself and husband be entirely private. We will not draw aside the veil till the next morning, which came up with a blaze of broad, staring sunshine, promising an unpleasantly hot day. The commanding officer's quarters, though surrounded by a neat paling-fence, was as bare and innocent of the least attempt at a garden as all the rest of the quarters were. The red, hard earth alone stared up at the hard blue sky; outside the fortress walls, ungainly cactus and stunted mesquit bushes made the plain look only the more inhospitable and barren.
The quarters were low, but cool; and as the doorways were only hung with curtains, the breeze that swept over the plain had free access to every room in the house. The large sitting-room at the colonel's quarters had been darkened since early morning, and the heat excluded as much as possible, for the colonel was threatened with a severe attack of the torturing headache that sprang from the badly-healed wound in his forehead. As the sun rose higher, he succumbed to the pain; and as he threw himself on the wide, low lounge, in intolerable suffering, Regina stepped lightly to his side, to supply the usual remedies. But a cold look and colder words drove her back from his couch; and as he called to Manuela to bathe his head, in gentle, almost tender tones, she for the first time felt a deadly hatred toward this girl, whom she knew still to be an angel in virtue and purity.
Struck to the heart, she left the room, only to throw herself on the hard floor of the next apartment, where she grovelled in an agony of anger and pain. Suddenly the sound of horses' hoofs fell on her ear, and she sprang up with one wild bound, and flew to the door, just in time to motion Paul, who had already dismounted, into her presence.
"Now has my time come!" She could hardly restrain herself from crying it out aloud to the frowning mountain and the arid plain. "Ricardo, thou shalt be avenged! avenged thou, my poor heart, for the tears and the blood wrung from thee for many, many bitter days!"