Gregorio Garcia rushed to the room, glanced in with wild, bloodshot eyes, and then with unrestrainable fury, sought out his wife, and grasping her arm cried in a voice as full of horror as of rage, “Traitress! You have set free the murderer of your child!”
She threw herself on her knees at his feet,—he never knew with what purpose, whether to confess her weakness or declare her innocence,—for Doña Feliz cast herself between them.
“It was I who set him free!” she exclaimed. “I love the Garcias too well to suffer them to be made a mockery of by the false mercy of such laws as ours. Think you the idol of the bandits would be sacrificed for such a trifle as a child’s life? And you, Gregorio Garcia, would you, this fury passed, avenge your injuries in the blood of your wife’s brother, robber and murderer though he be? Leon has sworn to me to hide himself forever from the family he has disgraced, under another name in another land. He has the brand of Cain upon his brow,—God will surely bring his doom upon him!”
Doña Feliz spoke like a prophetess. The superb assurance upon which she had acted, setting aside all rights of man and relegating vengeance to the Lord, did more to reconcile Don Gregorio to the escape of his enemy than all further reflection, decisive though it was in convincing him that in the disordered and anarchical state of the country, the laws would have shielded rather than punished an offender so popular as was Leon Vallé. There was perhaps, too, a comfort in the hidden hope of personal vengeance with which he waited long months to learn the retreat of the man who had done him such foul wrong.
Meanwhile the exact facts of the case were never known abroad; and when at last it was rumored that Leon Vallé had been shot by a rival guerilla chief and hung to a tree placarded as a traitor and robber, there were few to doubt the story, or to make more than a passing comment on the hard necessities of war. There seemed so much poetic justice in it, that Gregorio Garcia, who was near the end of the disease contracted through exposure and mental agony, did not for a moment doubt it, and died almost content. Indeed, the circumstances were so minutely detailed by a servant who had followed Leon in his adventurous career and who dared to face the family in order to prove the death, that even Doña Isabel herself did not question it until long months afterward, when a petty scandal stole through the land. The lady of San Lazaro had disappeared,—whether of her own free will, whether in madness she had strayed, or whether she had been kidnapped, none could conjecture. No demand for ransom came, no tidings were ever heard of the peerlessly beautiful Dolores.
It was after that time that Doña Isabel began to demand tidings of all who came to her door, and a suspicion entered her mind which became a certainty upon the night our story opened, but which no subsequent event had tended to confirm during the years that had passed since then.
This brief relation may serve to explain the strange emotions and experiences that made Doña Isabel what her full womanhood found her, and which with other events of her later life rendered possible and natural the bitter suspense and fear that held her the long night through, a watcher at the door of one who, as others had done, might find a means to pierce her heart and wound her pride, if not to awaken her deep and passionate affections.
XXII.
Chinita woke with a confused sensation of haste, and in the dim light discovered with a momentary surprise that she was in one of the chambers of the great house. Her first clear remembrance was that there was to be a wedding in the village that day, and that she must hasten to help array the bride, her old playmate Juana,—a girl scarce older than herself, but who as the daughter of the silver-smith held some pretentions to superior gentility among the village folk. She wondered that she was not in the hut with Florencia and the children, and raised herself upon one arm to peer through the gloom at the figure upon the bed; then suddenly sprang to her feet with an exclamation. The sight of the wounded man brought to memory the train of events connected with his appearance there. The young man was asleep, but even if he had been awake and in dire need of aid, Chinita would not have paused an instant; for it flashed into her mind that she must see and speak to Tio Reyes before he left. He had told her so little—nothing that she could separate as a tangible fact. She must know more. Surely it was early still,—she never slept after daybreak; he would not yet be gone. Yet in quick apprehension, which burst forth in an irate interjection at her tardy awakening, she ran out into the court.
The morning light was beaming there unmistakably, though no ray of sunlight penetrated it; and not a creature was stirring, and still hopeful the young girl hurried to the outer court. The mingled sounds of the movements of men and horses greeted her ear. Although she was late, Tio Reyes perhaps was still there. Vain hope! One glance around the great court showed her that he whom she sought was gone.