“The thought came to me as I rode out of the town,—it came back to me again and again. After hours of vain search I suffered myself to be convinced. I came back and taxed Juana with knowing with whom, and when and where, her friend had gone.”
“Well?” ejaculated Doña Isabel, in extreme agitation.
“She denied it. By all the saints she denied it; but I had a saint she had forgotten to commend herself to.” He smiled significantly.
Doña Isabel understood the arguments used by rancheros to refractory wives too well to doubt what his grim jest meant. At another time she would have indignantly dismissed from her presence the man who admitted laying a hand in castigation upon his wife; now she merely by an imperative gesture urged him to finish what he had to communicate.
“It was as I thought,” he said coolly. “Two men talked with her last night. The one was Juana’s brother, Pepé; the other was the Señor Americano your grace knows of.”
Doña Isabel sank back in her chair as if struck by a sharp weapon. “The American! the American!” she repeated again and again. She felt as though a hand had been thrust from the grave to torture her. The superstitious dread which had been planted in her breast by the first glimpse of the face of Ashley Ward, and which had perhaps led her irresistibly to a course that the resolution of years would under ordinary circumstances have rendered impossible to a nature as tenacious as was her own, became a horrible certainty. Evil fate in the guise of the American appeared to pursue her. Whatever the purpose with which he had lured Chinita from her side, it could but be productive of woe for her. Would the tale of her daughter’s shame and her own apparent heartlessness be told throughout the land? Had this pale and seemingly spiritless young man resolved on such a vengeance of his cousin’s fancied wrongs? Or—worse still—was this but a repetition of the old, old tale of passion and folly? Doña Isabel covered her face with her hand and groaned again.
Gabriel had called his wife to the room, and she came with eyes red with weeping, and told the tale that seemed to her best. Fearful of bringing the vengeance of the Señora upon Pepé, should she avow that he had left the inn alone with Chinita, she declared he had but accompanied the American, whom she boldly affirmed had set out for the coast, with the young girl, intending to set sail for the wild country whence he had come.
Doña Isabel and Gabriel both knew too well the inventive genius of their countrywomen literally to believe all she said; yet as hour after hour passed by and no news of the fugitives was heard, and no trace of them in spite of the most untiring search was found, they were at length led to conclude—the one with despair—that Juana’s words were true, and that the brief connection of the beautiful foster-child of Pedro Gomez with the lady of Tres Hermanos was ended forever.
XLI.
Never perhaps did so marked a change occur in the discipline and carriage of any body of troops, from a cause apparently so slight, as that which followed the flight of Chinita. Of the visit of the American nothing was publicly known, but the wildest rumors of her probable action ran like wildfire through the ranks, the name of Ramirez coupled with her own being on every tongue. So potent was the fame of the guerilla chieftain and the fascination of Chinita, that a word from her at that excited moment would have acted like fire on straw, and set a blaze to the smouldering insubordination and disappointed energies of the baffled and impatient recruits, who had entered upon the service from love of adventure and booty rather than with any fixed convictions or an intelligent conception of the interests at stake.