With a cry Chata drew forth the tiny bag, almost the counterpart of that poor Chinita had worn, and the sight of which had confirmed the mistake of Pedro,—on such slight things hangs fate! She thought of how often she and Chinita had compared them when children, laughingly proposing to exchange or open them, yet ever shrinking from tampering with them in superstitious awe. Pedro, who had returned, snatched it from her hand,—the act irresistible. As he opened it with his dagger’s point, a filigree earring fell into his palm. He groaned and turned away.
Herlinda caught from his hand a tattered paper. “Read, read!” she cried to Ashley. “See that he was noble, true as you have said! He was my husband!”
The proof attested by the signature of the long dead Mademoiselle La Croix, and that of the living priest, was of the simplest, the most efficient, and all these years had been preserved by the piety or superstition of the child to whom it had been confided, and who, had she but known it, had so vital an interest in its discovery. Chata gazed at the paper in blank amaze. Around her were men and women giving thanks to God and his saints. At the knees of Herlinda was her uncle Leon Vallé and Doña Isabel her mother.
Ashley Ward was the first to break the spell. He took Herlinda’s hand. “Remember, here is a man who never doubted you,” he said.
“And here one who would have died for you!” said Gonzales.
In a single phrase each had expressed the loyalty of the nation he represented,—Ashley, that of faith in man’s honor and woman’s chastity; Gonzales, the tenacious love that distrust might change to jealous madness, but which it could never destroy.
Within a few hours a sad and solemn funeral cortege[cortege] set forth from Las Parras, bearing all that was mortal of the beautiful Chinita. Not far from the limits of the town Ashley and Gonzales came upon a startling and awful sight,—a woman lay dead upon the road, her garments sodden, her beautiful hair defiled by the mud of the highway. She had fallen face downward. As though some evil omen warned him, Leon Vallé hastening from the rear anticipated them in raising the corpse.
It was that of the maddened Dolores. It had needed no weapon to reach her heart; despair and agony had summoned to her destruction the swift and fatal malady that had killed her father. Those who saw her, he who pressed her wildly to his breast and bade her live, accusing himself not her, called it a broken heart. As her child had said, “Death wipes out every wrong.” Only remorse, pity, love survive.
They buried them both—the two of that sad name Dolores—in the hacienda church. But one lies in a nameless grave, and the other is marked by one that recalls a vision of a beautiful girl, to whom a happier destiny should have brought the joys of life, and whose proud spirit should have conquered its cares; yet its perplexities, its conflicting passions, had made the pilgrimage so hard, so set with thorns, that she had been content—yes, thankful—to end it there: “Chinita.”
In so short a life the unfortunate girl could not have wandered far from heaven; yet for years there was one on earth who spent upon each day long hours of prayer and fasting at the tomb of her brother’s child,—to the memory and the name of Chinita uniting that of Leon, and embracing both in the undying love which looked beyond the grave for its perfection and its reward. At evening would come one older, but more peaceful than the mourner, to lead her home; and hand in hand, the two would pass out into the soft and tranquil air. Thus Doña Isabel and Feliz renewed with tears the friendship of their youth; and thus—ended the ambitions, the passions, the impetuous pride, sources of such strange and grievous perplexities—they await together in peaceful gloom the light of a perfect day.