“Your daughter?” echoed Don Rafael in a tone of such absolute amazement that even Ramirez was for a second distracted from his rage.
“Yes, my daughter! She whom you have aided Isabel to hide from me all these years. Faith, it was a pretty trick,—an eye for an eye, with a vengeance. But after all it was a petty plot, and soon fathomed. You were less jealous of flesh and blood than of this cursed gold, and gave me the first inkling of her whereabouts yourself.”
“I?” exclaimed the administrador; “I? What know I of a child of yours?”
“Ah, that is what you must satisfy me of. Where is she,—the Chata, whom you nodded and hinted about so mysteriously in your cups so many years ago?”
Don Rafael—if it were possible—turned a shade whiter than before; his form seemed to shrink, his heart sank with guilty shame and absolute terror. How well he remembered those few words, which, though so indirect and apparently unimportant, he had thought of with remorse a thousand times. And to what a terrible, though utterly unforeseen, conclusion they had led this man! He lifted his hands above his head.
“By the Blessed Mother, I swear,” he said, “that I know not what you mean! I know nothing of a child of yours!”
Ramirez looked at him contemptuously. “You will tell me next that the child your wife denies is yours,” he said.
In effect it had been upon the lips of Don Rafael to claim Chata as his daughter, as he had done a thousand times before. Was she not his before all the world? Had she not been from the very moment the eyes of his wife had rested upon her? But she had betrayed the confidence to which she had been but partially admitted,—Rita! He hesitated, and Ramirez seized the advantage.
“You dare not!” he exclaimed. “Your wife has confessed all: it will never do to trust a woman with a secret in company of a man who cares to learn it, though very perversity might keep her silent with a world of women.” The sight of the discomfiture of Don Rafael had restored to Ramirez some portion of good nature. “The screeching has ceased,” he added. “Yet I am a fond father. I would assure myself of my child’s safety. Where is the girl? I must and will see her, if but to tell her why I played her false last week. Where is my daughter?”
Don Rafael’s face, which throughout this interview had retained its pallor, crimsoned with excess of agitation. The mystery of Chata’s visit to the hacienda was revealed. Had she met this man? Did she know—did she believe? He remembered her changed aspect, her silence, her tears. Ramirez stood watching him with impatience, yet triumph. The crimson flush convicted the administrador. Don Rafael strove in vain to steady the glance of his suffused and burning eyes, to still the throbbing of his temples, while he sought to command the most impressive and convincing words in which to answer and forever silence this mad assumption. But none presented themselves. The group around listened breathlessly, more excited than Ramirez himself. They looked silently from face to face of the two men who were engaged in this singular dispute. Inside the room one might have heard a feather float through the air, so deep was the silence; and at last, in despair of finding imposing words, the administrador uttered the simple denial, “Chata is not your child.”