“Somewhere near San Augustin, and I think, several days ago, though I’ve only just heard of it.”
“Strange that. As you know, I’ve been staying at San Augustin for the last week or more; and there was no word of such a thing there.”
“Not likely there would be; it was all done quietly. Don Ruperto has been living out that way up in the mountains, hiding, if you choose to call it. I know where, but no matter. Too brave to be cautious he had come down to San Augustin. Some one betrayed him, and going back he was waylaid by the soldiers, surrounded, and made prisoner. There must have been a whole host of them, else they’d never have taken him so easily. I’m sure they wouldn’t and couldn’t.”
“And where is he now, Ysabel?”
“In prison, as I’ve told you.”
“But what prison?”
“That’s just what I’m longing to know. All I’ve ye heard is that he’s in a prison under the accusation of being a highwayman. Santissima!” she added, angrily stamping her tiny foot on the tesselated flags. “They who accuse him shall rue it. He shall be revenged on them. I’ll see justice done him myself. Ah! that will I, though it costs me all I’m worth. Only to think—Ruperto a robber! My Ruperto! Valga me Dios!”
By this, the two had mounted up into the mirador—the Señorita Valverde having come down to receive her visitor. And there, the first flurry of excitement over, they talked more tranquilly, or at all events, more intelligibly of the affairs mutually affecting them. In those there was much similarity, indeed, in many respects a parallelism. Yet the feelings with which they regarded them were diametrically opposite. One knew that her lover was in prison, and grieved at it; the other hoped hers might be the same, and would have been glad of it!
A strange dissimilitude of which the reader has the key.
Beyond what she had already said, the Condesa had little more to communicate, and in her turn became the questioner.