Between the main building and the offices there was a small arched lobby, through which one entered the great court, upon which piles of broken ores and the long dried masses were spread. In this lobby in the olden time the workmen had been stopped by the watchman or gatekeeper and searched,—a proceeding to which they daily submitted with indifference, holding their arms on high while the practised searcher ran his hands over their thin and scanty garments, shook out the coarse serape and tattered sombrero, peered among the rows of glistening teeth and under the tongue, for those fragments of rich ore or amalgam which in spite of all precautions, or by the connivance of the searcher, reached the outer world, netting in the aggregate a considerable surplus to the income of the laborers, which found its way to the gambling tables, or was spent in the adornment of their wives,—as was proved by the great decline in the village of the manufacture of filagree ornaments of quaint and delicate designs upon the closing of the Garcia mining-works.
Ashley, with a feeling of curiosity or a sense of impending action, which renewed his strength as a tonic might have done, noticed that the door upon the side of the lobby that opened into the main building or living rooms was also ajar. He glanced in, but except where the long ray of light stole in through the aperture, which his person partially obscured, all was so dim that he saw only imperfectly a few scattered articles of furniture,—and they appeared to be so old and battered that they were scarce worth the protection which the great padlock and rusty key, hanging from a staple in the door, indicated had been afforded them.
With a feeling of awe, Ashley remembered that his cousin must have lived, and perhaps had lain dead, in that room. With nervous energy he thrust open the door, and the light streamed in. He started as his eyes fell upon the floor. It was of large square bricks, thickly spread with the dust of many years, but impressed with footprints so blurred that, dazzled as his eyes were, he could not tell whether they were those of man, woman, or child. They seemed mysterious, ghostly. There was no sound of human presence. His heart beat as it had not done in all the excitement of that day.
“I am here! I have been waiting as you bade me,” said a low, frightened voice. The words came so unexpectedly that Ashley scarce understood them. He stepped forward and glanced around searchingly. In the farther corner of the room a female figure was in the act of rising from a low seat on which it had crouched. The face was half-averted, the dark reboso was drawn over it with the left hand, the right was outstretched as if in supplicating, almost compulsory, welcome.
“Good God!”—“Dios mio!” The ejaculations were simultaneous; the girl sank to the floor, the young man involuntarily drew back.
“Señorita!” he exclaimed in a voice of incredulity, “Señorita, you here and alone?”
“Maria Sanctissima! not the General Ramirez!” he heard her moan; yet in the fright and confusion there seemed an accent of relief. “Don ’Guardo! Oh, what has brought you here? Oh, Señor, believe me—”
“Do not distress yourself to explain, Señorita,” interrupted Ashley, coldly. “Rise, I beg, and I will go at once; but that you may not waste more time in waiting, I will tell you that the man you speak of will not be here to-day. And,” he added, with an intensity that startled even himself, “if there is justice in heaven or upon earth, never again shall he fulfil a lover’s tryst upon a spot that by any other than a demon would be shunned as a scene of gentle dalliance, if not abhorred as the theatre of a crime that should have blasted his whole life!”
The girl threw back her head-covering and looked up in uncomprehending amaze. As her gaze caught Ashley’s both colored, both averted their eyes in confusion. Ashley recoiled before hers, so childlike, so honest.
“Chata!” he murmured; “Chata!” involuntarily extending toward her his hand in deprecation, in entreaty, in protection. She clasped it as a frightened child might, and clinging to it rose to her feet, swaying a little and bending low, not with weakness, but with shame.