Ramirez divined this, and his face darkened. “You know me, Don Rafael,” he said in a low tone, “and that I am a man to take no denials.”
“Yes,” answered the administrador, shortly, “I know you. The saints must have blinded me that I was so easily deceived upon your last visit; but you had always the power to mask your face at will.”
“Bah! every man has a dozen countenances at his command, if he but know how to summon them,” replied Ramirez, carelessly, “and a touch of art to fix their coloring, and twist the eyebrows or moustache. Why, even your mother was deceived! Where is she now? Ah! that woman was like Isabel herself; I swear she would have killed me, even when she seemed to love me most. It is the way of women, like serpents, to twine and sting at the same moment.”
“My mother is dying,” said Don Rafael, lifting his eyes for a moment upon the face of the image of Mary. “Yet living or dying, it is not for a man to hear another speak lightly of his mother. But this is nothing to the purpose.”
“Nothing,” replied the other, accepting the rebuke; “and I have no time to lose.” He seemed to forget the chocolate, pushing the cup from him, and turning as if to rise from the chair. “Look you, Rafael, what money did Isabel leave with you? Not half her resources went in that mad freak of raising a troop for Gonzales.”
Perhaps Don Rafael had expected the question, for his countenance remained imperturbable. “There are horses and cattle and corn and men, still,” he answered. “The administrador of Tres Hermanos can do nothing to defend them; but the money,—by Heaven and the Holy Virgin, its hiding-place is known only to him, and he will die before you shall have another dollar to add to those which have cost so much blood and so many tears!”
Ramirez’s eyes flashed; yet the look of astonishment which he threw upon the small, half-clothed man was as full of admiration as though he had been a king clad in royal robes. But even a king would not have thwarted Ramirez with impunity.
“You know me,” he reiterated in the same intonation with which he had before spoken the words, allowing a long, dark, intimidating gaze to rest upon the face of Don Rafael.
“Yes, I know you,” was the answer as before. “Yes, I know you; and it is for that reason I have said that never a dollar belonging to the woman you have so foully wronged shall pass into your hands. Thank Heaven that she is not here to be tempted! Thank God that while the identity of Ramirez with the bane and curse of the house of Garcia has been shaping itself in my mind, no hint of the truth has been in hers!”
“I do not believe it!” cried Ramirez, violently. “She hates me! for the sake of that puling boy and her dotard husband she hates me still! ‘The bane of the house of Garcia,’ said you. Why, what man among them has a name beyond his own door-stone but me? And the women! Ah, ah! What saint would have saved the fame of the women of the house of Garcia had it not been for me?”