“But thou couldst still be a nun,” said Doña Feliz, with a peculiar smile; “and why shouldst thou not be?”
“Why not?” ejaculated Chinita. “Because I will not!” Then seized with a sudden terror, she cried, “Is that why Doña Isabel has taken me from Pedro? Is it to shut me up to pray for her and the wicked brother she loved so much? Selsa told me she had set her own daughter to free his soul from purgatory, and is not that enough? I’ll not do it. My knees ache when I kneel; I yawn, I fall asleep. I cannot bear to be forever in one place. It is to go away, to see strange sights, to wear silk and lace every day, as the niña Herlinda must have done,—see, here are some of her dresses still,—it is for this, and because I was born for such things, that I stay with Doña Isabel; it is not to pray. I care not to pray, nor sing hymns, nor dress saints. I will go to her and tell her so!”
Doña Feliz caught the arm of the excited child. “I am your friend,” she said. “Speak not a word of what I have said. Perhaps it was a foolish thought; but many more beautiful than you have entered convents, and perhaps have been happy.”
“Is the Señorita Herlinda happy?” asked Chinita, her excitement calmed by the thought of another. “Selsa told me once,—it was the night Antonita saw the ghost of the American, when she came back from the mountain,—Selsa told me a witch had laid a spell upon her the day he was murdered,—a witch who loved the foreigner; and that the niña Herlinda drooped and withered and would have died, but that a fever carried away the evil woman before she could read her into her grave.”
“The witch!” ejaculated Doña Feliz, mystified. This was a superstition of which she had heard nothing. “Who was the witch?”
“How can I tell?” answered Chinita. “Chata knows more of her than I. It is to her old Selsa told her tales; she is never cross to Chata. But after the American was killed I know the witch used to read and read and read strange words to the poor niña, and she grew paler and paler, and more and more sad.”
“And the witch died?” queried Feliz, thinking of Mademoiselle La Croix.
“Yes, in a good hour,” answered Chinita, energetically. “But I forgot; you must know it all, Doña Feliz. Tell me,”—with her old gossiping habit,—“tell me, did the Señorita love the American? Was it for him she pined away; or because she was bewitched; or was it because the Señora would not let her marry the Señor Gonzales, but would send her to the convent to pray for the wicked Don Leon?“
“Quien sabe? Who knows?” answered Doña Feliz, in the non-committal phrase a Mexican finds so convenient. “It is not for us to chatter of the Señorita Herlinda. Peace be with her! and have a care how you mention her name to Doña Isabel.” Her brow contracted as she thought how many conjectures, how much gossip of which she had known nothing, had been busy with events she had believed quite passed from remembrance.