“No,” muttered Leon, moodily; “when I ventured my hacienda and lost, there was no Antonio to bid me play his and get it back.”
He looked at Isabel with an air of reproach. She had neither look nor word of reproach for him, yet she felt that a mortal blow had been dealt her. And Leon? He had laughed, though she knew that the laugh was that of the mocking fiend Despair which possessed him; and he had bade her go on his behalf to Garcia. She left him in desperation. She knew how utterly fruitless such an appeal would be.
It was fruitless. Don Gregorio asked with some scorn in his voice whether Leon thought him as weak as she had been, or as much of a madman as himself when he had dared the chances of the tables at San Augustin. For him, Garcia, to furnish money to the oft-tried scapegrace would be a folly that would merit the inevitable loss it would bring. All of which, though true enough, Don Gregorio repeated with unnecessary vehemence to Leon himself, with the tone of irrepressible satisfaction with which he at last saw humiliated the man who had for so long held such a resistless fascination over his wife.
With wonderful self-restraint Leon replied not a word to the cutting irony with which his brother-in-law referred to the mad ambition and folly which had led to his losses, and with which Gregorio excused himself from further assisting in the ruin of the Garcia family,—reminding the gamester that though he had thrown away the key to fortune which he had taken from his sister’s hand, he had still youth, a sword, and a subtle mind, any one of which should be able to provide him a living.
“That is true,” replied Leon, with a dangerous light in his half-closed eyes. “Thanks for the reminder, my brother. What is the old saying? ‘A hungry man discovers more than a thousand wise men.’”
They both laughed. It was not likely that Leon’s poverty would ever reach the point of actual want. There at the hacienda was his home when he cared for it; but as for money,—why as Don Gregorio had said, the key to fortune was thrown away, and it seemed unlikely the unfortunate loser would ever recover it.
Almost on the same day on which Leon Vallé had told his sister of his fatal hardihood at the feast of San Augustin, there arrived, with assurances of the profound respect of Señor Fernandez and his daughter, the jewels and other rich gifts which Dolores had accepted as the betrothed of Leon. With deep indignation that his explanations and protestations had been rejected, but with a pride which prevented the frantic remonstrances which rushed to his lips from passing beyond them, Leon received these proofs of his dismissal, which in a few days was rendered final by the news that the beautiful Dolores had married a wealthier and perhaps even more ardent suitor, whom the insolence and mockery of Fate had provided in the person of the lucky winner of San Lazaro. Even Don Gregorio felt his heart burn with the natural chagrin of family pride, and Isabel would have turned with some sympathy toward the brother of whom, unconsciously to herself, she could no longer make a hero. Strangely enough, his aspect as a suppliant for her husband’s bounty had disrobed him of the glamour through which she had always beheld him. When she herself was powerless to minister to him, he was no longer a prince claiming tribute, but the undignified dependent whom she blushed to see lounging in sullen idleness in her husband’s house. Yet as has been said, when word of the marriage of Dolores Fernandez reached them, they would have given him sympathy; but he had received the news first, and collecting a half-dozen followers had mounted and ridden madly away.
The horses they rode were Don Gregorio’s yet Leon had gone without a word of excuse or farewell. Isabel had no opportunity to tell him that she had no more money to give him; and in her distress at supposing him penniless it was an immense relief to her to find that he had retained in his possession the jewels that the father of Dolores had returned to him. He would at least not be without resource. But soon a strange tale reached her. The jewels torn from their settings, the stones in fragments, the whole crushed into an utterly worthless mass, so far as human strength and ingenuity could accomplish it, had been found upon the pillow of the bride. The husband was jealously frantic that her sanctuary had been invaded; the bride was hysterically alarmed, yet flattered at this proof of her lover’s passion; and the entire community were for days on the qui vive for further developments in this drama of love.
But none came, and soon Leon Vallé’s name was heard of as one of the guerillas of the Texan war, where he fought for—it was not to be said under—Santa Anna; and ere many months his name rang from one end of the republic to the other,—the synonym of gallant daring, which in a less exciting time might have been called ferocious bloodthirstiness.
Isabel quailed as she heard the wild tales told of him; but Don Gregorio shrugged his shoulders and said, “Thank Heaven he turned soldier rather than brigand!” The chief difference between the two in those days was in name; but that meant much in sentiment.