"Not the curse, beloved, not the curse!" she begged, tremulously, "the curse of your people. It means—it means—Ai! not the curse, little one! Thou hast only meant to frighten me to tell you how it was, and I will—I will! Only, child of the spirits, Doña Espiritu, bring not the curse!"
“You Lied to me—All of You!”
She cowered and mumbled in a sort of palsied fear, but the girl sat there untouched by her misery, looking at her drearily. Perhaps she had some slight hope of denial, but Polonia's gray face put that out of her reach.
"Sit up," she commanded, and the old woman hastily scrambled into a sitting posture, but with her hands over her eyes, her body still rocking with fear. "Why did you do it?"
Never before had Tia Polonia heard those hard cold tones from her "querida"—her little one—her nursling of other days. This girl sitting there erect in the glimmering light of the candle was really Doña Espiritu of the tribe of the kings.
"Excellencia," she muttered, "it is true; I did sin. But the padre gave me the word. He said your soul was lost; that the man had bewitched you as—as your little mother had been bewitched when she—when she left religion for your father, and in the end they both died—and so soon!—and—and I wanted you to live, Excellencia! and I wanted your soul to live; and—so it was I took the word of the padre to you, and told you he was dead—and wished that he was dead—but it was all no use at all! On his hand when the fever burned was your ring—it kept him alive and he could not die, and all day and all night he said, 'Doña Espiritu! Doña Espiritu!' The padre heard, and I heard. The American brother, he heard too, and asked the Indios who was Doña Espiritu, and where did she live, that he might send for her. But it was no use. The padre made them all afraid for your soul, so that I told you the lie. Now it is all said, and my life is going out of my body at the curse of your anger."
In fact, the fear in the old creature had worked on her own nerves, so that her final words were very faint. She spoke as one half swooning, and put out her hand in pitiful plea for help.
"Ah—the good padre," said the girl, bitterly. "Well, you see how it has all ended. The padre died, and has gone to God to answer for the lie; and the man he wished dead is alive—alive—alive, and oh—Mother of God! is happy with—with—"
Her cold self-control melted in a flood of tears, and she flung herself face down on the pallet beside the frightened Indian woman, her form shaken with shuddering sobs of absolute despair.