In her absorption Chinita was unconscious that she was observed,—but it chanced that Don Rafael Sanchez and his mother had just left the Señora Doña Isabel, and were passing through the upper corridor to their own apartments. The gallery was wide and they were in the shadow, but a stray gleam of light touched the upturned face of the girl and exhibited it in strong relief within the framing of her waving hair. As they caught sight of it, they involuntarily paused to look at her.
“I do not wonder,” whispered Feliz “that such a face is an accusing conscience to Doña Isabel. There is a strange familiarity in every feature; and what a spirit, too, she has,—one even to glory in strife!”
Don Rafael nodded. “There has always seemed to me something in that child to mark her as the offspring of a dominant family,” he said; “it is inevitable that she must break the lines an adverse Fate has cast about her. Others such as she stretch out a hand to Vice; if something better comes to her, who are we to hinder it?”
The brow of Doña Feliz contracted. “Ay, Rafael,” she murmured, “what a change a few miserable years have wrought! Once I was a sister to Doña Isabel, and now—”
“You are no traitress,” interposed Don Rafael, “and it is by circumstance only that the change has come. Console yourself, dear mother, and remember we are pledged. Though we seem false to her mother, only so can we be true to Herlinda.”
He breathed the name so low that even Doña Feliz did not hear it; she listened rather to the beating of the heart that seemed to repeat without cessation the name of one so loved and lost. “How strange it is, Rafael,” she said presently, “that I have such persistent, such mocking dreams, which against my reason, against all precedent, create in me the belief that all is not ended for Herlinda Garcia.”
Don Rafael looked at her musingly.
“There is a man called Juarez who has dreams such as yours,” he said; “but they are of the freedom of a race, not of one woman alone. But he is hardly able to work miracles. Yet, mother, this truly is the time of prodigies; what think you this boy, the young American that Doña Isabel brought hither, calls himself?”
“I have asked him,” she said, “but he did not understand me. Oh, Rafael! my heart stood still when I saw him first; yet after all he is not so very like—”
“Yet he has the same name, Mother. It may be but chance; those Americans are half barbarians as we know,—they forget the saints, and seek to glorify their great men by giving their children as Christian names the surnames of those who have distinguished themselves in battle or statesmanship. Sometimes, too, a mother proud of the surname of her own family gives it to her son. It may have been so with this man. When I gave him pen and paper, and bade him write his name, it was thus: ‘Ashley Ward.’”