Chinita had slept far better upon the preceding night upon a sheepskin. Her excitement and the unusual comfort of the bed kept her wakeful; and at early dawn she was up, peeping into the wardrobe, where long-disused dresses and other garments were hanging. She took down one of bright silk and put it on, and thought how exactly it fitted her. She could scarcely see herself in the dim mirror, and she went to the door to open it for the admission of more light, and with a momentary fright found herself a prisoner. She decided in a moment that Doña Isabel had no intention of detaining her beyond the sleeping hours, yet a feverish impulse seized her to escape at once. That any one should hold her at a moment’s disadvantage was intolerable to her. Without thinking of the dress she had on, she glanced around her eagerly for means of egress. The window was barred, but there was a door that opened into an adjoining chamber, into which she passed hastily, finding the door that opened on the corridor actually ajar. As her way was open, she was in no hurry to depart, but stood balancing herself on one foot, holding by one hand to the door-post, and with the other pushing back her hair that she might see clearly into the court.
Not a creature was astir; the very bird that was in a cage hanging near her stood silently on his perch, with his head on one side, gazing through the bars as if in pensive wonderment at the silence.
Chinita had a feeling that the world had been transformed with her; she was half terrified, yet amused, and longed for some one to speak to. Could she speak the old words, the accustomed sounds? Was she indeed Chinita and not another? Had Rosario or Chata been under the same roof, she would have been tempted to run to them at once with the query; but there was no one who would know what she meant if she put such a question to them. They would only laugh and stare and pass on. Ah, there was one who could not pass on! At a bound she was on the stairs, and in a minute stood at the door of the stranger’s room. It was open; he liked the air. Early as it was, Selsa had left him; so without let of hindrance Chinita seated herself at the foot of the bed, and with expressive pantomime began to inquire into the state of the wounded shoulder.
The young man looked at her in amaze. This was the strangest of the strange visitors he had had. At first he did not recognize her in the incongruous dress; but a glance at the elfin face and the mop of curls recalled to his mind the name Chinita, and he held out his hand with a gesture of welcome and surprise, and even found words in his meagre stock of Spanish to ask her where she had been.
“I have been in my home,” she answered with a great show of dignity. “Do you not see, I am a lady, a grand lady?”
She had risen and spread out the silken dress with her hands. The young man caught one of the locks of her hair, and pulled it teasingly, “No comprendo, I don’t understand. Tell me where is your mother? Where is your padre?”
Such a mixture of languages should have been unintelligible, but Chinita understood very well, and with a sudden prompting of the spirit of mischief which was never far from her, replied, “Padre mio muerto! Americano guero, como Ud.! Oh, si Americano!”
“What!” cried the young man in English, “Your father dead! An American? Fair like me?” He had clutched the lock of hair so tightly, as he rose in his bed in his excitement, that her head was quite near him. “Are you quite sure? Can it be possible?” adding, with sudden remembrance that intelligent though she was it was impossible she should understand his foreign tongue, and angry as he saw her at his vehemence, it was unlikely she should care to divine his meaning, “Niña bonita, pretty child, pardon me! Your father an Americano? Well, that is wonderful! I Americano,—I, Ashley Ward. Pardona mi!”
Chinita was not to be at once appeased; but she saw with inward delight that he was much impressed by her claim jestingly set forth to American parentage, and there was something in the sound of his name that recalled to her mind the man who had been murdered so many years ago. She began with a thousand gestures, which made somewhat intelligible her voluble Spanish, to give an account of him. The young man listened with intense excitement, anathematizing his ignorance of the language in which she spoke, yet convinced that chance had led him to the very spot which he had had it in his mind to seek. In the interest of her narration, Chinita forgot the assertion she had made; but her listener more than once supposed that she alluded to it, and looked intently upon her face to catch a glimpse of some expression that should remind him even of the race to which the man of whom she spoke had belonged. But there was nothing. The features, expression, color, were those of a Mexican of mixed Spanish and Indian types, with nothing individual other than a weird beauty and vivacity, and the peculiar hair which had suggested the name that even Doña Isabel did not seek to disassociate from her. For at the moment when the interest of her narrative was at its height, and Ashley Ward had risen on his pillows and was following her every gesture with mute and rapt attention, the lady of the mansion entered, calling breathlessly, “Chinita! Chinita!” suddenly arresting her steps, as she caught the concluding words: “And so he was killed! And they say it was not a man, but the Devil who did it. But for my part I don’t believe it, for the ghost of the American can be seen under the tree or at the old reduction-works any night; and it’s not likely Señor Satan would give so much liberty to a soul he seemed so anxious to get.”
Chinita had finished her sentence with a certain defiance, for she felt guilty before Doña Isabel,—not so much for being found in the room of the wounded guest, as because of her borrowed attire. But Doña Isabel did not seem to notice that. “Thou art wrong to come here,” she said; “thou art wrong to talk like a scullery-maid of things thou dost not understand. What did I hear thee say of an American as I came in?”