As these thoughts passed through his mind, a sudden breeze stole through the open gate and reached the lobby; there was a faint smell of cactus flowers, and a rustle of the dry grass. The effect was weird and ghostly. A shadow fell between them. Had the sun plunged down beneath the western hills? They glanced up and started apart,—Doña Feliz was before them.
The ordinarily grave and self-possessed woman was for a moment the most agitated of the three. She gasped for breath. She had been walking fast, but it was not that alone which caused the earth apparently to reel beneath her. She had found Chata, whose disappearance from the hacienda she had discovered at the moment when a cry had run through the house that the horse of the young American had returned riderless; that the youth had doubtless met an evil fate. She had found them both,—and together!
She pressed her hands over her eyes as though to shut out some horrid vision; a moan broke from her lips,—then she caught Chata in her arms and glared at Ashley with concentrated anguish and fury. Had one guilty thought possessed him, or had he meditated a doubtful act, her glance would have covered him with confusion. As it was, he read in her expressive face and gesture a volume of deep and terrible significance, far different from that which an anxious duenna ordinarily casts upon the imagined trifler with the affections of her charge. Nothing of that assumption of virtuous indignation, yet of flattered satisfaction, which in the midst of remonstrance gives indication of a certain sympathy and inclination to condone the offence in consideration of its cause, was apparent. Doña Feliz evidently had in her mind no lover’s venial follies. This meeting was to her a tragedy,—the very culmination of woes.
Ashley read something of this in her expression and gesture, and hastened to reassure her, by giving a partial account of the reasons of his return. The anxious guardian of innocence would perhaps have thought his turning aside at the instance of Pepé to view his cousin’s grave, his lingering there, the departure of the servant, the flight of his horse, all a fabrication, but for the meeting with his cousin’s murderer, which the young man recounted with startling brevity and force, unconsciously regaining in the recital much of the excitement and deep indignation which had thrilled him at the time of the encounter, and which had gradually subsided amid the new complications that Chata’s words had opened before him.
Involuntarily Ashley refrained from any allusion to the fact that the young girl had ventured forth to meet this man Ramirez; and acute though she was, it did not suggest itself to Doña Feliz, who seemed lost in wonder at the almost miraculous chance which after so many years had brought into contact the secret murderer and him whose mission it seemed to avenge the innocent blood. In his recital, Ashley had not mentioned the name of the self-confessed assassin. Doña Feliz did not ask it,—perhaps she inferred that it remained unknown to him,—yet Ashley was certain his identity was no problem to her. Had she guessed the secret all these years? Had she screened the guilty and fostered the innocent, at the same time?
Deep as was her interest in his tale, full as was her acceptance of the fact that the meeting of Ashley Ward and Chata was purely accidental, Doña Feliz did not exhibit a tithe of that horror and dismay which was depicted upon the countenance of Chata, who listened breathlessly,—her lips apart, her hair pushed back, her startled eyes opened wide. Ashley would gladly have recalled his words as he looked at her. Every particle of color had faded from her face.
In her absorption in Ashley’s words, Doña Feliz had ceased to regard or even remember the young girl, who suddenly recalled herself to that lady’s mind.
“Doña Feliz,” she murmured in an agonized and pleading voice, “when my mother forsook me, why did you not suffer me to die? Oh why, why did I live to hear such horrors, to know such wretchedness as this?”
As if in a frenzy, before either thought to stop her, or found words with which to answer or recall her, she ran out from the lobby,—her small figure passing unimpeded through the cactus-guarded gateway,—and fled across the plain toward the hacienda. She was young and strong,—excitement lent wings to her feet. Doña Feliz and Ashley standing together in the gateway looked at each other in amazement. The girl continued her flight until she reached the outskirts of the village. There a horseman stopped her. Even at that distance they recognized Don Rafael, and saw that Chata clung to him passionately when he dismounted.
“She is safe!” murmured Doña Feliz. “Rafael will know how to account for her presence with him.”