A chill fell upon the governess, yet she spoke sharply, almost pertly: “Not disgraced by Herlinda, Madame. She was indeed married to John Ashley, in the parish church of Las Parras, by the missionary priest, Father Magauley.”
The long, slow glance of incredulity changing into deepest scorn which Doña Isabel turned upon the governess seemed to scorch, to wither her. She actually cowered beneath it, faltering forth entreaties for pardon, rather, be it said to her honor, for the unhappy Herlinda than for herself. Meanwhile, with lightning rapidity, the events of the last few months passed through the mind of Doña Isabel. Yes, yes, it had been possible; there had been opportunity for this base work. Her eyes clouded, her breast heaved; had she held a weapon in her hand, the intense passion that possessed her might have sought a method more powerful than words in finding for itself expression. As it was, she turned away, sick at heart, her brain afire. Doña Feliz had placed a strong, firm hand over Herlinda’s lips. “It is useless,” she said in a voice like Fate. “You will never see him again.”
Herlinda comprehended that those words but expressed the unspoken fiat of her mother. She shuddered and groaned. “Mother! mother!” she said faintly, “he loved me. I loved him so, mother! Mother, I have spoken the truth; Mademoiselle will tell you all; I was indeed his wife.”
Doña Isabel would not trust herself to look at her daughter. She dared not, so strong at that moment was her resentment of her daring, so deep the shame of its consequences. “Vile woman!” she said to the governess, in low, penetrating tones of concentrated passion; “you who have avowed yourself the accomplice of yon dead villain, tell me all. Let me know whether you were simply treacherously ignorant, or treacherously base. Silence, Herlinda! nor dare in my presence shed one tear for the wretch who betrayed you.”
But her commands were unheeded. The present anguish overcame the habits and fears of a whole life,—as, alas! a passionate love had once before done. But then she had been under the domination of her lover, and had been separated from the mother, whose very shadow would have deterred and prevented her. Now, even the deep severity of that mother’s voice fell on unheeding ears. Though tears came not, piteous groans, mingled with the name of her love, burst from the heart of the wretched girl, who leaned like a broken lily upon the breast of Doña Feliz, who from the moment that Herlinda had declared herself a wife gazed upon her with looks of deep compassion, alternating with those of anxious curiosity toward Doña Isabel, whose every glance she had learned to interpret. She was a woman of great intelligence, yet it appeared to her as though Doña Isabel, who was queen and absolute mistress on her own domain, had but to speak the word and set her daughter in any position she might claim. The supremacy of the Garcias was her creed,—that by which she had lived; was it to be contradicted now?
“Tell me all,” reiterated Doña Isabel, in the concentrated voice of deep and terrible passion, as the cowering governess vainly strove to frame words that might least offend. “How did this treachery occur? Where and how did you give that fellow opportunity to compass his base designs?”
Herlinda started; she would have spoken, but Doña Feliz restrained her by the strong pressure of her arm; and the faltering voice of the governess attempted some explanation and justification of an event, which, almost unparalleled in Mexico, could not have been foreseen perhaps even by the jealous care of the most anxious mother.
“This is all I have to tell,” she stammered. “You remember you sent us to Las Parras six months ago, just after you had refused your daughter’s hand to John Ashley, and promised it to Vicente Gonzales. We remained there in exile nearly two months. Herlinda was wretched. What was there to console or enliven her in that miserable village? Separated from her sister, from you, Madame, whom she deeply loved even while she feared, what had she to do but nurse her grief and despair, which grew daily stronger on the food of tears and solitude? At first she was too proud to speak to me of that which caused her sleepless nights and unhappy days. But my looks must have expressed the pity I felt. She threw herself into my arms one day, and sobbed out her sad tale upon my bosom. She had spoken to this Ashley but a few times, and then in your presence, Madame; but in your country the eye seems the messenger of love. She declared that she could not live, she would not, were she separated from John Ashley; that the day of her marriage with Vicente Gonzales should be the day of her death.”
“To the point,” interrupted Doña Isabel in an icy tone. “I had heard all this. Even in John Ashley’s very presence Herlinda had forgotten her dignity and mine. This is not what I would know.”
“But it leads to it, Madame,” cried the governess, deprecatingly, “for while I was in the state of mingled pity and perplexity caused by Herlinda’s words, a message was brought to me that John Ashley was at the door. I went to speak to him. Yielding to his entreaties, I even allowed him to see Herlinda. How could I guess it was to urge a course which only the most remarkable combination of events could have made possible?”