But Chata could not utter a word. Ramirez broke into a laugh. He himself heard that betrayal of his over-strained nerves with a shudder. He would not have laughed had his will served. Why should he laugh? Then the shame, he thought, of this poor Herlinda had been complete. She had a child; she had come to the avenger of her shame hoping to find the lost proof of her frailty. Even his sister Doña Isabel was crying wofully, “Oh Leon, Leon, is it thou? Art thou the Ramirez my poor Chinita loved? Oh, in pity give her back to me! I will forgive all—yes, even Norberto’s death—if thou wilt give Herlinda her child.”
“You are all mad!” cried Ramirez, recalled to himself. “What know I of Herlinda’s child, or even that she exists? I only know that this is mine,” he laid his hand upon Chata,—“she of whom you thought to cheat me. Ah, had I known there was another infant to claim your secret love,” he added mockingly, “I could have better disposed of my own!”
While the unrepentant brother of Doña Isabel was saying this, Pedro in gruff and surly accents was reminding him of the girl who had stopped him upon the road years before, and had given him an amulet. Yes, the impatient listener remembered her; he had heard her name,—Chinita; that was the girl of whom Rafael had spoken, she who had been the foundling of the gatekeeper. A vision of the unkempt, witch-like creature who had startled his horse, as she stood under that accursed mesquite-tree, rose before him. Was that Herlinda’s child? She stood still with her hand upon Chata, gazing upon her incredulously. Ramirez threw it off in sudden passion.
“Uncle Leon,” said Herlinda humbly, hopelessly, “you killed my husband. Oh, I would forgive you that, could you give me my child! Oh, when I saw this girl here—” she dropped her face into her hands and wept.
“Shame on you!” cried Ramirez. The sight of woman’s tears irritated him, and Herlinda’s assertion of her marriage made blacker still a deed whose silent, stealthy consummation had ever been to him a secret cause of shame. “What though I killed your lover, was it not to avenge the honor of the Garcias?”
“The honor of those you had disgraced!” cried the outraged woman scornfully,—“of her whose life you had crushed! No, your hand was ready for murder, your heart delighted in blood,—and so you killed my love, without a word of warning; and because in your vile, cruel heart you could believe no woman pure, no man just, you thus brought in an instant desolation and ruin upon me!” Ramirez shrank before the indignant pathos of her voice. “Ah,” she added, “all, all this I would forgive—O God, have I not prayed to thee and thy saints for grace to forgive?—if I could but behold my child. They tell me she has followed you,—one says because of the strange infatuation your mad career presents to her; another, that she may avenge her wrongs, her father’s murder. I warn you! beware! such a girl is not to be scorned.”
“I know nothing of her,” cried Ramirez, vehemently. “Here is your mother—Pedro; they have known the girl, they should render you an account of her. As for me, there is a man here who upon the grave of him I killed declared himself his avenger: it is to him I will answer for that deed.”
Ashley Ward involuntarily drew his sword, eager for the offered combat; but Pedro and Gonzales threw themselves between the two men. “This is neither the time nor the place,” exclaimed Gonzales; while Herlinda cried, “Do not touch my uncle for your life! My mother, my mother!”
Doña Isabel had indeed thrown herself upon her knees before the priest, and frantically implored his interposition. As he raised her he was seen to speak; but no one heard his words, for shrill female voices in altercation added to the confusion of the moment, and every eye was turned in the direction whence they came.
“Let me go! let me go! I will hear no more! I will wait no longer! He will escape. Oh, it is not with such weak words I will speak!”