“Hush! hush, Herlinda! O God, my child, what can this be to thee?” Doña Feliz shuddered as she spoke. She glanced at the closed window; the walls she knew to be a yard in thickness, yet she wished them double, lest a sound of these wild ravings should escape.
“Feliz, you dare not tell me!—then it is true! he is murdered! lost, lost to me forever!” The young girl slipped like water through the arms that would have clasped her, crouching upon the floor, wringing her hands, tearless, voiceless, after her last despairing words. Feliz attempted to raise her, but in vain.
Carmen, aroused by the sounds of distress, appeared in the doorway which connected the two rooms. “Back! go back!” cried Doña Feliz, and the child frightened and whimpering, withdrew. Feliz turned to the governess,—the deep dejection of her attitude struck her; and at that moment Doña Isabel appeared.
“Herlinda,” she began, “this is sad news; but remember—” she paused, looked with stern disapprobation, then her superb self-possession giving way, she rushed to her daughter and clasped her arm. “Rise! rise!” she cried; “this excess of emotion shames you and me. This is folly. Rise, I say! He could never have been anything, child, to thee!”
Herlinda did not move, she did not even look up. She had always feared her mother; had trembled at her slightest word of blame; had been like wax under her hand. Yet now she was as marble; her hands had dropped on her lap; she was rigid to the touch; only the deep moans that burst from her white lips proved that she lived.
The attitude was expressive of such utter despair that it was of itself a revelation; and presently the moans formed themselves into words: “My God! my God! I am undone! he is dead! he is dead!”
The words bore a terrible significance to the listeners. Doña Isabel turned her eyes upon Feliz, and read upon her face the thought that had forced its way to her own mind. Her face paled; she dropped her daughter’s arm and drew back. The act itself was an accusation. Perhaps the girl felt it so. She suddenly wrung her hands distractedly, and sprang to her feet, exclaiming, “My husband! my husband! Let me go to him! he cannot be dead! he is not dead!”
The words “My husband” fell like a thunderbolt among them. Herlinda had rushed to the door, but Doña Feliz caught her in her strong arms, and forced her back. “Tell us what you mean!” she ejaculated; while the frightened governess plucked her by the sleeve, reiterating again and again, “Pardon! pardon! entreat your mother’s pardon!”
But the terrible turn affairs had taken had driven the thought of pardon, or the need of it, from her mind. “I tell you I am his wife! Ah, you think that cannot be, but it is true; the Irish priest married us four months ago in Las Parras. Let me go, Feliz, let me go! I am his wife!”
“This is madness!” interrupted Doña Isabel, in a voice of such preternatural calmness that her daughter turned as if awestricken to look at her. “Unhappy girl, you cannot have been that man’s wife. You have been betrayed! Child! child! the house of Garcia is disgraced!”