“Go then, go!” cried Pedro, impatiently. “I am not blind, though old usage sometimes misleads me, and I talk like a dotard. Yes, yes. There comes the carriage down the cañon, and Don Rafael himself on his gray, and Gabriel and Panchito; I can almost distinguish their very faces.”
So could Ashley, for the air was brilliantly clear, and the travellers had yielded to the inspiring influences natural at the sight of home, and allowed their horses to break into a mad pace, far different from the methodic gait of ordinary travel.
Pepé, in spite of repressed excitement, had gone at his usual lounging and listless pace to inform Doña Feliz of the approach of her son, and a little group of villagers had assembled around Pedro, when a lithe, active young figure brushed by them and leaped upon the stone bench at Ashley’s side. He glanced up, and to his surprise saw Chinita, her hair flying, her eyes bright with anticipation. Putting her finger upon her lip as he was about to speak, as if to enjoin silence, she pressed herself close to the wall. There was a long narrow niche where she stood, and it received almost her entire figure. No one but Ashley and Pepé, who came with haste behind her, had noticed her.
“Hush! hush!” she whispered. “Chata will look for me here,—here where I used to stand. Ay, Pepé, you were a good lad to warn me in time, so I could slip away. Doña Isabel will never miss me,—she is at her prayers; and Doña Feliz is wild with joy that her son comes home again.”
The excited girl had spoken in the softest of voices, yet Pedro heard her. But the rest of the gathering crowd were craning their necks and straining their eyes in the direction in which the approaching travellers were to be seen.
Pepé looked up at the ardent and gypsy-like young creature, as though she were a saint, and Ashley with a glance of genuine admiration and sympathy. He knew not whom she was thus eager to welcome, but it thrilled and surprised him that she should manifest such lively affection. Both the young men instinctively drew near as if to shield her, and stood one on either side, almost hiding her.
“That is right; but you will stand away and let her see me when the carriage drives by,” she whispered, placing a hand on Pepé’s shoulder. “Dios mio, how my heart beats! She will cry with joy when she sees me, with silk skirts and all so fine. And Doña Rita and the niña Rosario,—how they will open wide their eyes!” And she broke into a low laugh, which to Ashley’s ears was too full of a sort of malicious triumph to be merry.
The time of waiting seemed long; it was indeed far longer than Chinita had counted upon. “They will miss me from the house; they will look for me here!” she whispered again and again in an agony of impatience.
Strangely enough, the adults of the gaping throng, who were intent on watching the approach of the travellers, had not noticed her; but three or four children arrayed themselves in a wondering row, pointing their fingers at her with ejaculations of “Look! look!” but were checked from uttering more by Pepé’s warning frowns and Chinita’s own imploring gestures.
Ashley was beginning to realize that there must be much that was absurd in the scene. Surely, never was so strange a background made for a group of gossiping peasants as this of the eager-eyed and beautiful girl, leaning from her niche in the massive stone-wall between the two young men—the one the type of aristocratic refinement and delicacy; the other of swarthy, ignorant, half-tamed savagery—who served as caryatids, upon whom she leaned alternately in her excitement, seeming herself to partake of the nature of each.