Gonzales bent over her hand, uttering inarticulate words of greeting. She scarcely seemed to hear them. “Vicente, is it thou?” she said faintly. “But he, who is he?—the man of the yellow hair, with the face that at prayer and at penance, asleep and awake, has ever haunted me?”
Herlinda stepped nearer to Ward. Her lips were parted, her eyes aflame; never in all his life before and never again saw he a woman so beautiful as this one in the unsightly garb, so coarse it grazed the skin where it touched it. “No wonder,” he thought, “my cousin loved her; he could have done no other, even had he known he was doomed to die for her!”
Ah! the unhappy daughter of the haughty Garcias was far more beautiful that night than ever John Ashley had beheld her. Suffering first had refined, and now the divine inspiration of hope illumined those perfect features. Ashley Ward comprehended this; but Gonzales with horror recalled her words, and thought her mad. “Maria Sanctissima!” she cried as the light flashed full on the American, “I am forgiven, that I behold the living likeness of his face.”
Ward bent before her, inexpressibly touched. He would have spoken, but at this instant her eyes fell upon the kneeling man at her feet. “It is Pedro,—yes, it is Pedro,” Herlinda said in a low voice. “Perhaps he knows of her,—yet, my God, he dares not look at me!”
“Niña, Niña!”
“Speak, Pedro, speak! thou must know of her. Tell me, was Feliz faithful? Is my child well, happy?”
“Merciful God, she is indeed mad!” interjected Gonzales. “O Herlinda, know you not you never were married, never had a child?”
Herlinda turned on him a glance of mingled entreaty and impatience, then raised her eyes piteously toward heaven. “They said I was not married,” she moaned brokenly; “but oh, I had a child,—and they took her from me. Oh, if I could have died!”
Gonzales turned from her with a groan. How bitter was the revelation! Married! It could not have been! And a child? Ah! he knew then why a convent had been her doom.
In a broken voice Pedro began to speak. Ashley, with the red glare of the torch he held falling full upon him, seemed to Gonzales a mocking witness of the shame and woe which from Herlinda were reflected upon him, the man who loved her, had ever loved her; yet he felt instinctively that the American had a right to hear, to judge, as well as he. Ah, it was an American who—“An American!” he gasped, and his hand touched the hilt of his sword.