I had no eyes for this disgusting fanfarronade of a degrading superstition. Sick of the sight, wearied with the sounds, I had given orders for my horse to be saddled, intending to ride forth and seek repose for my spirit amid the silent glades of the chapparal.
While waiting for my steed, an object came under my eyes that quickened the beatings of my pulse: my gaze had been long turned in one direction—upon the hacienda of Don Ramon de Vargas.
Just then, I saw emerging from its gate, and passing rapidly down the hill, a horse with a rider upon his back.
The snow-white colour of this horse, and the scarlet manga of the rider—both contrasting with the green of the surrounding landscape—could not escape observation even at that distance, and my eyes at once caught the bright object.
I hesitated not to form my conclusion. It was the white steed I saw; and the rider—I remembered the manga as when first my eyes rested upon that fair form—the rider was Isolina.
She was passing down the slope that stretched from the hacienda to the river, and the minute after, the thick foliage of the platanus trees shrouded the shining meteor from my sight.
I noticed that she halted a moment on the edge of the woods, and fancied that she gazed earnestly towards the village; but the road she had taken led almost in the opposite direction.
I chafed with impatience for my horse. My resolve, made on the impulse of the moment, was to follow the white steed and his scarlet-clad rider.
Once in the saddle I hurried out of the piazza, passed the ranchos of yucca, and reaching the open country, pressed my horse into a gallop.
My road lay up the river, through a heavily timbered bottom of gum and cotton-woods. These were thickly beset with the curious tillandsia, whose silvery festoons, stretching from branch to branch, shrouded the sun, causing amongst the tree-trunks the obscurity of twilight.