Pepé shook his head doubtfully. His views were no clearer than Chinita’s, but they were not additionally obscured by an unreasoning enthusiasm for a self-created hero. Doña Isabel was rising from her chair; the rattle of the wood upon the bricks startled the two speakers.
“How goes it with thy sister Juana?” asked Chinita, lightly. “She told me once she loved Gabriel because, though he was old and ugly, he would do more to please her than all the young and handsome lovers. Are they happy, do you think, or has he beaten her already, as I said he would?”
Pepé looked at her keenly and with an expression of wild hope from behind the wide hat he was holding in both hands before his face, in awkward preparation for departure. Would Chinita too marry the man who would please her? And after all it was but a little thing,—just a hint to the man whose admiration she jeered at.
“Thou canst go now, Pepé,” said Doña Isabel, approaching. “I am sure the Señorita has heard enough of the wild doings of these mad soldiers. Thank Heaven, they leave us soon! Ah, now that I think of it, thou mayst say to the Señor Americano that Captain Ruiz told me to-day he would gladly give him safe escort as far upon their way as their roads may lie together; and—but I forgot, such messages are not for thee. I will send them by the Señor Administrador.”
Pepé muttered his adieus and bowed himself away in some confusion. Chinita looked after him meaningly; he caught her glance and then the motion of her lips. His heart beat wildly; they formed the refrain of a popular song,—
“Adios, my dearest love!”
Pepé reached the court quite dizzy. Ashley Ward and Captain Ruiz were both waiting for him. His excitement had reached a crisis. He seized Ruiz by the arm. “If you would please her,” he hissed in his ear, “find Ramirez, and let him, and not Gonzales, lead the troops.”
“You are drunk!” answered Ruiz; yet he clutched the youth by the arm, and led him into his room.
Pepé came to his senses with the shock as he sank upon a stone bench against the cold, hard wall. Presently he gave a brief account of Chinita’s desires and reasons. Ruiz listened without a smile. Childish and unprincipled as they were, they were not more so than scores he had heard discussed in the course of the years of anarchy in which he had entered upon manhood. Find Ramirez, pledge him to the Liberal cause, leave it to him to gain such an ascendency over the troops that they would themselves proclaim him their leader! It was an easy task. It set him thinking, and Pepé slunk away to hope, to doubt, to despair, to hope again.
“Adios, my dearest love!”—