On coming opposite a picture suspended against the sala wall—the portrait of a beautiful girl—he stopped in front, for a moment gazed upon it, and then into a mirror that stood close by.
As if there was something in the glass that reflected its shadow into his very soul, the expression of exultant triumph, so lately depicted upon his face, was all at once swept from it, giving place to a look of blank bitterness.
“One is gone,” he said, in a half-muttered soliloquy; “one part of the stain wiped out—thanks to the Holy Virgin for that. But the other; and she—where, where?”
And with these words he staggered on towards his chamber.
Chapter Twenty One.
Struggling among the Sages.
It is the fourth day after forsaking the couch among the shin oaks, and the two fugitives are still travelling upon the Llano Estacado. They have made little more than sixty miles to the south-eastward, and have not yet struck any of the streams leading out to the lower level of the Texan plain.
Their progress has been slow; for the wounded man, instead of recovering strength, has grown feebler. His steps are now unequal and tottering. In addition to the loss of blood, something else has aided to disable him—the fierce cravings of hunger and the yet more insufferable agony of thirst.