She cast her thoughts back. She had been young when the American was murdered, when the Señorita Herlinda had left the hacienda never to return, when the child had been found at the gate; yet she wondered that she had been so blind to what now appeared so plain, and that all alike—the wise and simple, the old and young—had been so utterly dazzled by the glamor that surrounded the family of Garcia that no suspicion of dishonor might attach to its women, or of cowardice to its men. Surely none other than Herlinda Garcia would have escaped the lynx-eyed Selsa, or a score of other scandal-loving women! Curiously enough, while a feeling of detraction for the nun, whom she had long been used to canonize in her thoughts, stole into her mind, a sensation of traditional reverence for the Garcia arose for the young girl before her. Florencia’s ideas of morality were perhaps vague on all points; they certainly did not reach that of aspersion of the innocent fruit of another’s fault.
“Ay, niña,” the woman said at last with a gasp, “it is not every one who drinks red wine that is happy. Thanks to God, the peasant woman who carries a burden in her arms too soon needs only to suckle it under her scarf, like any mother, and needs not to close upon herself the doors of a convent. Santa Maria! who would have thought such things of the niña Herlinda?”
“Be silent!” cried Chinita, with a tardy repentance of her confidence. “How do I know that I am not the worst of evil thinkers, and a fool, a very fool? Look thou, Florencia, it is thou who shall discover the truth for me. Pedro is gone; perhaps he never knew it. The Tio Reyes must know; but where is he? Yet I must know. Oh, I could bear the truth from Feliz, from Doña Isabel; but they are as silent and as sorrowful as the image of the Madre Dolores. It is thou, Florencia, who must help me. Oh, it will be but a diversion for thee. Thou shalt talk of thy Tio Pedro, and of the day I was dropped in his hand, and of the days that went before. Thou canst talk now of the murder of the American, and of the Señorita Herlinda too, and there will be no Pedro to chide thee. And see,—” as the woman began some faint objection,—“I have all the pretty things Pedro gave me, and money too; yes, more than thou wouldst think. And thou shalt never miss thy uncle; thou shalt have them all, if thou wilt but talk to the old women of things that happened here before the time of the great sickness. But, Florencia, thou must tell them nothing. Oh, if I could only run again in and out of the village huts as I used to do!”
Florencia looked at the excited girl with a nod of intelligence. “Have no fear,” she said; “it is not possible that Florencia knows not how to manage her own tongue, though no one knows better than thyself it was ever a quiet one. But it shall wag now, and not like the dog’s tail, in mere idleness.”
Chinita laughed, then glancing around her warily, drew from her bosom a small gold coin. She had evidently prepared herself for a chance meeting with Florencia.
“Take it,” she said, “and go. Thou hast been here too long already; and,” she added with the flush of red again tingeing her face, “talk and gossip when the American is near. He must be sad,—it will cheer him to hear the voices, even if he understands but little; and if by chance he speaks to thee, why! thou shalt tell me what he says.”
Florencia had experienced one great surprise that morning, and here was another; the first had awed, the second delighted her. Like all her race she had the instincts of secrecy and intrigue, and suddenly the opportunity to practise both were offered her. She looked at Chinita with a glance of infinite cunning in her soft dark eyes; but the young girl would not meet her gaze. “Go, go!” she said impatiently; “you have been here too long. The Señora is coming—or is it Doña Feliz? Go! go, I say!”
It was neither Doña Isabel nor Feliz, but only Chata, who entered with a preoccupied air, scarcely noticing the woman who passed her on the threshold. She did not speak, however, until Florencia had reluctantly passed out of hearing; and then she cried eagerly, “Chinita! Chinita! who is the stranger who stood with thee at the doorway? God bless us! I thought I saw the ghost of the American we used to talk of; and but now I met him below in the court. Who is he? What is he here for?”
“That remains to be seen,” answered Chinita, with an uneasy laugh. Her hasty confidence in Florencia troubled her, and closed her lips toward the friend for whom she had hitherto longed. “At least the stranger is no ghost; yet how can we know that the man who was murdered here so many years before was anything to him?”
“But I do know,” insisted Chata. “I had gone to the arbor, thinking thou mightest be there, to break my fast. I was standing in the centre, with my eyes turned toward this room, thinking I should see thee leave it, and thinking too of the niña Herlinda,—O Chinita! she is still so beautiful,—when I heard a step behind me. It was a strange step, and I turned quickly and saw the American looking at me as if he too believed he saw a ghost. Was it not strange, Chinita? We looked at each other quite steadily for many moments, then he said,—