“Niña, Niña!” Pedro was saying. “They brought the child to me. Oh, the sweet child, with its soft, dark eyes,—oh, the child with its ruddy curls! and I remembered all that you had said, my Señorita. I watched over it, I cherished it, it was my own!”
“Thine! thine!” cried the nun clasping her hands, and in her excitement even thrusting him from her. “It could not be! Oh Feliz, Feliz! thou couldst not be so false!”
The tone of incredulity, of horror, in which she spoke pierced Pedro to the quick; yet he answered humbly, “I thought to please you, Niña, to keep her from those you distrusted; and she was happy, oh quite happy, all through her little childhood. You know one can be quite happy playing in the free air.”
The released nun burst into sudden tears. “Happy in the free air! Oh yes, yes!” she cried. “Oh, if all these years I could have begged even from door to door with my child, even with the brand of shame upon me! Oh the suffering, the suffering of these long, long desolate years!”
Gonzales stepped to her side, and placed her arm within his own. “Thou shalt be desolate no more, Herlinda,” he said, “thou betrayed angel of purity!”
“Betrayed, no!” cried Ashley Ward, looking up. “Deceived perhaps they both were, but the man who was slain as her betrayer believed himself her husband, as she believed herself his wife,—as I believe now she most truly was. Thank God I am here to champion their cause and that of their child!”
Gonzales left Herlinda a moment to embrace Ward in his southern fashion; then supporting her again listened to what Pedro had to say.
The mother’s face grew whiter and whiter as the tale proceeded. “That, that my child!” she murmured at intervals, and her head sank lower and lower upon her breast. Even Gonzales and Ward heard with amazement the story of Chinita’s appearance at the cave where Pedro had lain wounded. “What!” one cried, “has she not been all this time in the house of Doña Carmen? Did you not tell us that in a strange freak of impatience she had hastened there?”
“It was you, Señores, who affirmed it must be she, when you heard of the young girl who had been taken there, from the Indian whom you captured as a spy of Ramirez,” answered Pedro, with the humble cunning of the true ranchero; “and why should your servant contradict you, when Chinita herself had commanded otherwise—”
“And where in God’s name is she now?” demanded Ward. “You know who I am. You know all this time I could not have rested tranquil had I thought—”