An overpowering surprise hindered me from making reply. There was something more to account for my remaining silent. Through the darkness long shrouding my soul, I discerned the dawning of day.
“You cannot have forgotten the occasion?” continued the wounded man, still speaking reproachfully, “I myself have reason to remember it: since it brought me a message from Lola—the sweetest ever received from my querida. It was a written promise to be mine; a vow registered en papel: that sooner than enter the convent she would consent—huyar—huyar. You know what that means?”
Though I well understood the significance of the phrase, I was not in a state of mind to answer the interrogatory. I had one of my own to put—to me of far more importance.
“You received your letter through the window of a carriage? Was it not the writer herself who delivered it?”
“Por Dios, no! The billetita you speak of was from Dolores. She who gave it me was Mercedes!”
I felt like folding Francisco Moreno in my friendliest embrace. I could have stayed by his bedside to nurse him, or, what was then more likely, to close his eyelids in death!
I could have canonised him for the words he had spoken. To me they had imparted new life—along with a determination, that soon absorbed every impulse of my soul.
I need not tell what it was. In less time than it would take to declare it, I was scaling the steeps of Ixticihuatl in search of my lost love—once more, Mercedes!