In truth they were not quite alone. Chinita had half-sulkily, half-defiantly, crept after Doña Feliz, and had sunk down in her usual crouching attitude within the shadow of the wall. She would have preferred to follow Don Rafael and the General in their rounds, but she knew that was impracticable; Pedro would have stopped her at the gate, and sent her to Florencia, or kept her close beside him,—and so even the inferior pleasure of seeing and listening to the less attractive stranger would have been denied her. Chinita was an imaginative child; she used sometimes to stand upon the balcony with Chata, and gaze and gaze far away into the blue which seemed to lie beyond the farthest hills, and wonder vaguely what strange creatures lived there. Sometimes her wild imagination pictured such uncouth monsters, such terrifying shapes, that she herself was seized with nervous tremblings, and Chata and Rosario would clasp each other and cry out in fright; but oftener she peopled that world with cavaliers such as she had occasionally seen, and stately dames such as she imagined Doña Isabel and the niña Herlinda must be,—for the accidental mention of those names was as potent as would have been the smoke of opium to fill her brain with dreams. By the sight of Don José Ramirez in his picturesque apparel, part of these vague dreams seemed realized; and even the quiet figure of Don Vicente and the sound of his stranger voice had the charm of novelty. She placed herself where she could best see his face, with infantile philosophy contenting herself with the next best where the actual pleasure desired was unattainable. She was very quiet, for she had naturally the Indian stealthiness of movement, and she had besides a vague instinct that her presence upon the corridor might be forbidden. Still she did not feel herself in any sense an intruder; she felt as a petted animal may be supposed to do, that she had a perfect right in any spot from which she was not driven.
But as Doña Feliz and the new-comer were long silent, she became impatient, and half-resolved to settle herself to sleep there and then. She had drawn her feet under her, covering them with the ragged edges of her skirt, and drawing her scarf over her head and shoulders, tightly over the arms which clasped her knee, looked out as from a little tent, and instead of sleeping became gradually absorbed in the contemplation of the face and figure which, when seen beside those of the dashing Ramirez, had appeared gloomy and insignificant. The young man was dressed in black; the close-fitting riding trousers, the short round jacket, the wide hat, which now lay on the ground beside him, being relieved only by a scanty supply of silver buttons,—a contrast to the usual lavishness of a young cavalier; and in its severe outlines and its expression of gloom, his face, as he sat in the moonlight, was in entire harmony with his dress. How rigid looked the clear-cut profile against the dead whiteness of the column against which it rested, his close-cropped head framed in black, his youthful brow corrugated in painful thought. Suddenly he lifted the dark eyes which had rested upon Doña Feliz, and turned them on the fountain which was splashing within the circle of flowering plants and murmured:—
“I feel as though in a dream. Is it possible I am here, and she is gone, gone forever? How often I have seen her by the side of the fountain, raising herself upon the jutting stone-work to pluck the red geraniums and place them in her hair! Even when I was a boy her pretty unstudied ways delighted me,—and Herlinda as naturally as she breathed acted her dainty coquetries. And to fancy now that all that grace and beauty is lost to me, to the world, forever! that she is sacrificed—buried!”
He spoke bitterly and sighed, yet with that tone of renunciation which more completely than to death itself, marks the voices of the children of the Church of Rome as they yield their loved ones to her cloisters. It was in the voice of Doña Feliz, as she presently replied,—
“It seems indeed a strange destiny for so bright a life; but against the call of religion we cannot murmur, Vicente. Many and great have been the sins of the Garcias. May Herlinda’s prayers, her vigils, her tears condone them!” She crossed herself and sighed heavily.
“I cannot accept even the inevitable so calmly,” cried the young man in sudden passion. “I loved her from a child; I never had a thought but for her! She was promised me when we were boy and girl! She used to tease me, saying she hated me, and then with a soft glance of her dark eyes disarmed my anger. She would thrust me from her with her tiny foot, and then draw me to her with one slender finger hooked in the dangling chain of a jacket button, and laughingly promise to be good, breaking her word the next moment. She would taunt me when I sprang toward her in alarm as she leaped from the fountain parapet, and in turn would cry out in agonies of fright as I hung from the highest boughs of the garden trees, or when I dashed by her on the back of a half-broken horse, stopping him or throwing him perhaps on his haunches, with one turn of the cruel bit. Through all her vagaries I loved her, and perhaps the more because of them; and I fancied she loved me. Even later, when she had grown more formal and I more ardent, I believed that her coy repulses were but maiden arts to win me on.”
“I always told Doña Isabel,” interrupted Feliz, “that such freedom of intercourse between youth and maiden would but lead to weariness on one side or the other. But she was a hater of old customs. She said there was more danger in two glances exchanged from the pavement and the balcony than in hours of such youthful chat and frolic.”
“Yet this freedom was designed to bind our hearts together,” said Vicente. “The wish of Doña Isabel’s heart for years was to see us one day man and wife. Yet she changed as suddenly—more suddenly and completely than Herlinda did. What is the secret? Is not Tres Hermanos productive enough to provide dowers for two daughters? Is all this to be centred on Carmen? Rich men have immured their daughters in convents to leave their wealth undivided. Can it be that Doña Isabel—”
“Be silent!” interrupted Doña Feliz, as she might have done to a foolish child. “Let us talk no more of Herlinda, Vicente; it makes my heart sore, and can but torture thine.”
“No, it relieves me; it soothes me,” cried Vicente. “I have longed to come here to talk to you. Doña Isabel is unapproachable. She has relapsed once more into the icy impenetrability that characterized her in that terrible time so many years ago. I can just remember—”