The Return.
When Don Augustin Peña returned, he found his daughter alone, and still kneeling; he waited until her prayer was finished. The news of Don Estevan’s death so entirely occupied the haciendado’s mind that he naturally attributed Doña Rosarita’s pious action to another motive than the true one. He believed that she was offering up to Heaven a fervent prayer for the repose of his spirit, whose mysterious end they had just been made acquainted with.
“Every day,” said he, “during the following year, the Chaplain will, by my orders, say a mass for Don Estevan’s soul, for this man spake of the justice of God, which was accomplished in the desert. These words are serious, and the manner with which they were pronounced, leaves no doubt as to their veracity.”
“May God pardon him!” replied Rosarita, rising from her knees, “and grant him the mercy he requires.”
“May God pardon him!” repeated Don Augustin, earnestly, “the noble Don Estevan was no ordinary man, or rather, that you may now know it, Rosarita, Don Antonia de Mediana, who, in his lifetime, was Knight of the Grand Cross, and Duke de Armada.”
“Mediana, did you say, my father?” cried the young girl, “what! he must then be his son?”
“Of whom do you speak?” asked Don Augustin, in astonishment, “Don Antonio was never married. What can you mean?”
“Nothing, my father, unless it be that your daughter is to-day very happy.”
As she said these words, Doña Rosarita threw her arms round her father’s neck, and leaning her head upon his breast burst into a passion of tears; but in these tears there was no bitterness, they flowed softly, like the dew which the American jasmine sheds in the morning from its purple flowers.
The haciendado, but little versed in the knowledge of the female heart, misconstrued the tears, which are sometimes a luxury to women; and he could conceive nothing of the happiness which was drawing them from his daughter’s eyes.