As she sat there opening them one by one and after perusal leaving them unfolded in her lap, she became so absorbed that she did not notice the passage of time until a footstep sounded behind her, and glancing up she saw with trepidation that her grandfather was ushering in a tall and imposing stranger, whose military garb made her heart beat madly, for a wild thought of Fernando Ruiz flashed through her mind. Her confusion was not lessened by perceiving that the visitor was a man of more advanced age and infinitely greater assumption of rank. The telltale letters were in her lap, though involuntarily she had dropped her reboso over them; but she dared not rise lest they should drop in a shower around her, and she equally feared the anger of her grandfather and the condemnatory surprise of the visitor.
“I pray you enter the house, Señor! Pass in, sir, pass in!” she heard her grandfather say in his smoothest tones. “My daughter will be here almost immediately; but she stopped at the convent for a moment to buy a blessed candle to place before the altar of Our Lady of Succors. She will be honored indeed by this visit. Take care, Señor, the room is somewhat dark, but I will open a shutter. Valgame Dios, what have we here?” as he caught sight of the bent figure sitting in the narrow streak of sunshine. “Caramba, niña, rise! rise, I say! seest thou not the Señor General?”
“Ay, but I have the cramp in my poor foot, my grandfather,” cried Rosario in a voice of lamentation, vainly endeavoring under cover of the reboso to make some disposal of the letters which rustled alarmingly. “No, Señores, by Blessed Mary my patroness, let me alone!” she cried, as both her grandfather and the stranger attempted to help her,—the latter with a faint gleam of amusement in his eyes, the former with genuine consternation depicted on his face. “Ay, Chata,” for by this time her sister had appeared. “Oh, but my back is broken! it is worse than when you struck me with the stick when you were trying to knock the peaches from the tree. Oh! ah! no, it is impossible for me to rise!”
In dire affright Chata knelt before her. “Oh, what shall I do?” she cried, in remorse at the remembrance of an escapade that had been almost forgotten, and in sudden fear that it might have been the cause of her sister’s present distress. “Oh, my life! I thought it was your poor foot!” and she began rubbing one small slippered member, while Rosario eagerly whispered, “Stupid one, hide me these letters!” and the mystified Chata felt her sister’s hand with a mass of fluttering papers thrust under her arm, covered with the ever useful reboso.
Involuntarily the hapless confidant pressed them to her side, and at the same moment Rosario limped from the room, inwardly raging at making so poor a figure before the General, while Chata, standing for a moment abashed, was about to follow, when a voice which bewildered her by its strange yet familiar accent said gayly, “And you, my fair Señorita, have you never a twinge of the same disorder that afflicts your sister?” and he glanced meaningly at a pink envelope, which had fallen at her feet,—at the same time covering it with his foot that it might not attract the suspicious eye of the old man, who with profuse apologies for the informality of the reception was assuring the visitor that until that moment never had there been a healthier damsel than his granddaughter Rosario, adding with a sigh, “But the Devil robs with one hand and pinches with the other.”
Chata trembled and blushed painfully as she raised her eyes timidly to the General’s, while with a sense of the grotesque she was conscious of wondering whether he, like herself, was thinking her grandfather had suggested no complimentary agency in her grandmother’s removal to another sphere. But at the instant all present perplexities vanished in the surprise with which she recognized the face which she had seen but for a few brief hours years before,—the face of the man of whom Chinita had never grown weary of talking. “The Señor General Ramirez,” she said in a low voice, with some awe. She was more than ever bewildered by the look he had fixed upon her. She shrank back, barely dropping her hand for a moment upon that he extended toward her. She was actually inclined to be frightened, his eyes were so brilliant, his smile so eager. The foolish thought struck her that had not her grandfather been there, this strange imperious man would surely have taken her in his arms, would have kissed her! She hurried from the room to find Rosario waiting for her at the end of the corridor, alternately smothering her laughter in the folds of her dress, and angrily chafing at her sister’s delay.
“Your horrid letters!” cried Chata, thrusting them into her hands. “Here, take them, read them, laugh over them or cry, or kiss them if you will! I hope I shall never see a love-letter again in my life. He saw them,—the Señor General. I know he did. Oh, what shame!”
“Pshaw!” interrupted Rosario. “What does it matter? He will think none the worse of me. Without doubt he is come on the part of Fernando to ask for me. How proud and happy my mother will be, and how she will rail at me! It will not be difficult for me to cry as I ought, for I am mad with vexation to have appeared such a fool when I should have been so dignified. Why, the Señor will think me a child still! Does he not look like some one we know, Chata? And yet we can never have seen him before.”
“Yes,” returned Chata, “we have seen him. He is the General José Ramirez.”
“Ah, my heart!” ejaculated Rosario, dramatically. “What a misfortune! My father hates the General Ramirez because he once had some horses driven away from the hacienda; and besides he is a good Christian and fights for the Church! Ay, unlucky Fernando, to have chosen such a messenger! But thank Heaven, it is my mother who will first hear him! Ah, there she comes!” and in irrepressible excitement Rosario grasped her sister’s hand. “Oh, child!” she added sentimentally, “you too may be asked in marriage some day!” and she sighed with an air of vastly superior experience, while Chata revolved in her mind what her playfellow Chinita would say when she told her of this unexpected meeting with the hero whom she fancied she had rendered invincible by the gift of the amulet.