just the refrain of a song, yet it pursued and bewildered him. For less, stronger men than Pepé the ranchero have committed unimaginable crimes.
The next morning when they met in the court, Captain Ruiz stopped Pepé. “Tell her her wishes are law to me!” he said. “If she but love me, I—”
“Caramba!” cried Pepé, savagely. “Am I an old woman or a priest that I should carry your messages? She love you! she would needs have been born to lead apes, to love you.” And Pepé flung himself off in a rage, while the astounded Ruiz gazed after him in open-mouthed amazement.
“By my life, he loves her himself!” he muttered vacantly. “Señor Don ’Guardo, heard you ever such presumption? The bare-skin beggar loves the favorite—what shall we say?—niece of Doña Isabel!”
“Let us say you are both fools!” said Don ’Guardo in good round English and with a sudden rage, the motive of which was to himself inexplicable; and the discomfited captain bowed, not doubting that his own expression of disgust had been echoed.
“Caramba! a woman so beautiful gazed at by every beggar, like an image of the Virgin of Remedios carried in procession! I swear I will not forget thee, Pepito, and will keep a close eye on thee, now I know thou hast been tampered with!” continued Ruiz, hotly. “A word to the General Gonzales will be enough if he is of my mind!”
That day, in spite of Doña Isabel’s diligence, a pink note found its way to Chinita. “Good!” she said after reading it, “My General Ramirez will have the men; the Señor Gonzales will be helped, and Doña Isabel will do a double good. This is not so bad a subject,—this Ruiz; and his eyes are as black and large as those of Ramirez himself. All is well. All things will come right at last. Ah, if only what Don Rafael told Feliz one night should come true, and the convents are opened, then—”
She paused. It seemed too utterly impossible even to dream of. She looked again at her first love-letter; a twinge of remorse seized her as she thought of Rosario. She laughed, but she tore the paper into infinitesimal shreds.
What was the writer thinking? “Onward! I have gone too far to turn back even at the word of Chinita. A promise will gain her love, but the essential thing is the good-will of Doña Isabel. ‘A pearl is all the better for a golden setting!’ No treaties then with Ramirez. Though he is my godfather, I need not his patronage. Doña Isabel, a straight path, and Juarez! Forward! Ruiz, fortune favors you!”