Monsalvat heard a voice giving his address.
"He lives in my house, Madame. I am Moreno, the attorney, at your service. I consider myself a faithful friend of this illustrious gentleman. I belong to the ancient family of the Morenos of Chivilcoy; and though the unkind Fates...."
Monsalvat no longer felt the pressure of that warm hand.
Nacha, on the arm of her future husband, had stepped down from the car.
CHAPTER XXIII
Arnedo kept her locked up in first one house and then another, and Nacha's hatred of him grew until the intensity of her feeling frightened her. Such hate as this threatened to swallow up all other feelings, to absorb her utterly in itself, poisoning and destroying her. If she had been attracted to him before he carried her off, it was because she believed that he desired her. When she discovered, however, that his abduction of her was not for love, but for vengeance, to get even with Monsalvat; when she saw that he was actuated by something evil in him, which he could not have changed even though he had wanted to, she began to think of him as something monstrous and diabolical. He was the savage with no rôle to play in civilization, powerless—save for evil!
In the first prison he put her in she saw him only once, on the occasion when, pointing a revolver at her, he forced her to write the letter which was to be a final blow at Monsalvat. The effect of this incident on Nacha had been to rouse in her profound pity for the man she was so wounding. Again she was causing him suffering! She imagined him searching for her through all the dreary reaches of the city; and her constant thinking of him always brought her to one conclusion; for her, happiness could consist only in offering up her whole being in sacrifice for this man!
The owners of both houses had presented her to their best patrons. Nacha, frantic with rage, had driven them out of her presence. She was determined to escape and threatened to get the police. But so close was the watch kept over her that she could not even get a letter into the mail-box. In the second house she was sent to she made friends with one of the girls, the unfortunate daughter of an English drunkard whose stepmother had driven her away from home. Nacha, through Laura's help, succeeded in having her case brought to the attention of two men who frequented the house on Laura's account. One of them, an influential lawyer, informed the police of the situation and Nacha was given her freedom. Pampa would have gone to prison if Nacha had not refused to admit that she knew who was responsible for her abduction.