“Who can it be Jack? No. Jack has a soft voice—a small hand; but how could he be here, and with his hands free? No—no—no! Who then? It was certainly the voice of a woman—the hand, too. What other should have made this demonstration? I know no other—it must—it must have been—.”
I continued my analysis of probabilities, always arriving at the same result. It was both pleasant and painful: pleasant to believe she was thus, like an angel, watching over me—painful to think that she might be in the power of my fiendish enemy.
But is she so? Lincoln’s blow may have ended him. We have heard nothing of him since. Would to heaven—!
It was an impious wish, but I could not control it.
“What have I got between my lips? A slip of paper! Why was it placed there, and not in my bosom or my button-hole? Ha! there is more providence in the manner of the act than at first thought appears. How could I have taken it from either the one or the other, bound as I am? Moreover it may contain what would destroy the writer, if known to—. Cunning thought—for one so young and innocent, too—but love—.”
I pressed the paper against the tapojo, covering it with my lips, so as to conceal it in case the blind should be removed.
“Halted again?”
“It is the ruin, Captain—the old convent of Santa Bernardina.”
“But why do they halt here?”
“Likely to noon and breakfast—that on the ridge was only their desayuna. The Mexicans of the tierra caliente never travel during mid-day. They will doubtless rest here until the cool of the evening.”