“Absurd!” ejaculated the governess. “Doña Isabel, like every one else in the world, must submit to the inevitable.”
“So John said; but, Mademoiselle, neither you nor John know my mother, nor my people. She will never forgive: in her place, I would never forgive!”
“And yet you dared!” cried Mademoiselle La Croix, looking at the young girl with new admiration at the courage which stimulated her own. “Truly, you Mexicans are a strange people, so generous in many things, so blind and obstinate in others. Well, well! you shall find, Herlinda, I too can be brave. If I were a coward, I should say, wait until I am safely away; but I am no coward,” added the little woman, drawing her figure to its full height and expanding her nostrils,—“I am ready to face the storm with you.”
“Yes, yes!” said the young girl, hurriedly and abstractedly. “What,” she added, rising in her bed, and grasping the bronze pillar at the head, “what is that I hear? What a confusion of voices!” She turned deadly pale, and her white-robed figure shook beneath the long loose tresses of her coal-black hair. “My God! Mademoiselle, I hear his name!”
The governess too grew pale, though she began incoherently to reassure the young lady, who remained kneeling in the bed as if petrified, her hands clasped to her breast, her eyes strained, listening intently, as through the thick walls came the dull murmur of many voices. Like waves they seemed to surge and beat against the solid stones, and the vague roar forced itself into the words, “Don Juan! Ashley!”
Although a moment’s reflection would have reminded her that a hundred other events, rather than that of his death, might have brought the people there to call upon the name of their master, one of those flashes of intuition which appear magnetic revealed to Herlinda the awful truth, even before it was borne to her outward ear by the shrill voice of a woman, crying through the corridor, “God of my life! Don Juan is killed! murdered! murdered!” She even stopped to knock upon the door and reiterate the words, in the half-horrified, half-pleasurable excitement the vulgar often feel in communicating dreadful and unexpected news; but a wild shriek from within suddenly checked her outcry, and chilled her blood.
“Fool that I am! I should have remembered,” she muttered. “Paqua told me there was certainly love between those two; she saw the glance he threw on the young Señorita in church one day. But that was months ago, and she certainly is to marry Don Vicente.”
At that moment a middle-aged, plainly-dressed woman, with the blue and white reboso so commonly worn thrown over her head, entered the corridor. Her figure was so commanding, the glance of her eyes so impressive, that even in her haste she lost none of her habitual dignity. The woman turned away, glad to escape with the reproof, “Cease your clamor, Refugio! What! is your news so pressing that you must needs frighten your young mistress with it? Go, go! Doña Isabel will be little likely to be pleased with your zeal.”
The woman hastened away, and Doña Feliz, waiting until she had disappeared, laid her hand upon the door of Herlinda’s chamber, which like those of many sleeping apartments in the house opened directly upon the upper corridor, its massive thickness and strength being looked upon as more than sufficient to repel any danger which could in the wildest probability reach it from the well guarded interior of the fort-like building.
As Doña Feliz touched the latch, the door was opened by the affrighted governess, who had anticipated the entrance of Doña Isabel. The respite unnerved her, and she threw herself half fainting in a chair, as Herlinda seized the new-comer by the shoulders, gasping forth, “Feliz, Feliz, tell me! tell me it is not true! He is not dead! dead! dead!” her voice rising to a shriek.