Doña Rita had talked much during the early part of her visit of the family affairs of the important personages whom her husband served. Chata had heard the talk with more entertainment than interest; but she was of a reflecting and acute mind, and she began now to weave theories and form conclusions which sometimes startled, sometimes horrified her. Had she but caught the name that had brought the shriek from Doña Rita’s lips the evening the General Ramirez had talked with her! But without that clew her speculations were idle, and she tortured herself in vain, yet with unconscious dissimulation hid her wild and bitter thoughts beneath an exterior that to the ordinary observer appeared one of thoughtless rather than feigned and hysterical levity.
In the fear of meeting the General—though the temptation often came upon her to fly from the house lest he might enter it—Chata avoided going into the streets, and but that she feared it might prove a deadly sin she would even have made an excuse of illness to remain from Mass. But this might not be, though no temptation of a week-day feast would draw her forth. And thus it happened that she and Doña Rita were alone when the General Ramirez for the second time visited the house.
Rosario by chance had accompanied her grandfather on a visit. She had gone in the best of spirits; for she had shown Chata a note from Ruiz, in which he declared that though forbidden to ask for her until in the course of the revolution he had acquired a competency, or her father should lose his unjust prejudices against the Church party, he should ever remain true to her, and should live only in the hope of calling her his own. For the first time Chata had embraced Rosario with a genuine sympathy with this love which seemed so true and yet so hopeless, and had watched her turn the corner leading to the plaza, when she was suddenly aroused from a melancholy—which was actual repose compared to the state of excitement that had long possessed her—by the sound of a quick, imperious knock upon the street door; and glancing down, she saw the General Ramirez impatiently flicking his boot with the small cane he carried, and glancing up and down the street as if suspicious rather than desirous of observation. He had not seen her she was sure. Quick as thought she ran through the room, and passing through the window pushed open a door which led to the parapeted flat roof of the back building, and crouching behind a low brick wall prayed breathlessly to the Virgin for protection. It was a solitary place, where only a servant came sometimes to place a tub of water to be heated in the noonday sun, or to hang some household article for speedy drying. It was not likely, even were she wanted, they would think to look for her there. She was out of hearing, away from all the ordinary sounds of the house; no voice could reach her there,—not even that voice whose accents she could never forget, which had made her desolate.
As the time passed on and the stillness grew oppressive, and the sunbeams, which had at first annoyed and distracted her, stole to the wall and at last receded altogether, a sense of bitter forlornness and weariness overcame her; and ceasing from the vain repetitions of Aves and Pater nosters, Chata clasped her hands over her face, and resting it upon her knees burst into heart-rending sobs.
Her passion did not continue long; it was perhaps too severe. It was arrested as by a blow,—by the sudden bang of a heavy door. She lifted her head and listened. Was it fancy, or did she hear the rattle of musketry? It was an unfamiliar sound, and yet she recognized it. What had happened? Was an enemy entering the town? Had the garrison revolted? Accounts of such events were too frequent to make these conjectures other than natural even to Chata’s unwarlike mind. She hastily rose, pushed aside the bolt of the heavy door, and stepping into the corridor found herself face to face with Doña Rita.
“Ah, you are here!” that lady exclaimed in a hurried and abstracted manner, far different from that which she would usually have worn at the discovery of such a misdemeanor. “I have been seeking you everywhere,—I could not send a servant. And now something has happened in the street, and he has rushed away without seeing you,—the Señor General Ramirez, I mean.”
“I know whom you mean!” cried Chata. “Oh, my mother, why should I see him?” Then with wild passion she threw herself at Doña Rita’s feet, and buried her face in her skirts and the flowing ends of her reboso. “Oh, tell me that it was not true—what I heard! I was in the garden the other evening as you talked! Oh, my mother, my mother!”
Doña Rita looked down at her in startled surprise, but almost instantly an expression of relief rose to her countenance. “Rise, child, rise!” she said in a low, not ungentle voice; yet there was an inexpressible lack of maternal solicitude in it, which struck to the heart of the suffering child. “Listen; be reasonable; have I not ever been kind to thee? I do not blame thee even now that thou art forced to repay me so ill; it is not thy fault.”
“But you shall not be repaid so ill!” exclaimed Chata. “I will be your child forever. Oh, it is not possible that he—this strange man, who frightens me—would dare take me from you?”
“Bless me, niña, you are a strange one! If you but knew it, you have rare good fortune. A handsome lover and a rich dowry are not to be had every day for the asking. But you show a proper spirit, and one I should have expected after the good training you have had. Heaven knows what would have been the result had you been given to Doña Isabel, and allowed to run at large like most of the children of Our Blessed Lady. Yet it was a cruel trick my mother-in-law played me, and Rafael too! Well, well, it shall be brought home to him some day. Listen! was not that the sound of cannon? and my child abroad! Ave Maria Sanctissima!”