The terrible sight seemed to change Doña Josefa’s nature: all her woman’s weakness was quenched within her, and every thought bound up in the one determination of avenging the precious life which had been so cruelly sacrificed for love of her. She tore off her woman’s gear with the indignation of an enraged lioness, and arrayed herself in a full cavalier’s suit, with a montera[2] to cover her head and an ample cloak to hide her from scrutiny. Then she took a belt well furnished with arms, and a sword and blunderbuss to boot; and then a purse with two hundred doubloons; thus accoutred she wandered forth in quest of Don Pedro de Valenzuela’s assassins, making her way in all haste out of Valencia, for she knew the assassins would not long have remained there.
Hiding herself in the mountains by day, and taking the most unfrequented paths by night, she wandered on till she came to Murcia, and there she resolved to take up her abode for some little time to rest, and also to learn what she might chance to hear.
Here, in her cavalier’s dress, she walked about on the promenades, joined knots of speakers in the public plazas, and at night sat down at the card-tables and other places of resort, every where keeping her ears open to drink in any word any one might let fall about her lover’s assassination. One night, as she was sitting at a table carelessly shuffling a pack of cards, she heard two gentlemen talking very earnestly, and some words they dropped made her strain all her attention to catch the thread of their discourse.
“Yes, they are gone on; I am sure of it; and some hours ago,” asseverated the first speaker, as if he had been contradicted before.
“To be sure,” rejoined the other, in a tone of yielding conviction; “it was not likely they should remain in the country. No doubt it is as you say.”
“Excuse me,” said Doña Josefa, approaching the speakers with a courtly bow, for she could restrain her curiosity no longer, “but I think you were speaking of some gentlemen of Seville.... I am of Seville, and——”
“Of Valencia,” politely rejoined the gentleman, fairly caught in the trap. Had Josefa said she was of Valencia, his mouth would have been sealed for fear of betraying secrets.
“Oh, indeed, of Valencia!” she continued, assuming a tone of disappointment; and then, after a moment’s pause, she added, as if indifferent, “I think you spoke as if concerned for some friends in trouble?”
“Oh, not friends,” answered the person addressed, with a slight shudder; “we had but the most distant acquaintance with them; but they called on us yesterday to ask us to help them out of a difficulty.”
“Ah! that is very often the way of the world,” replied Doña Josefa, for she felt she must keep the conversation going till she could get all the information she wanted, though scarcely seeing how to bring it to the right point without exciting suspicions. “I’ll warrant now it was a regular piece of Valencian roguery[3]; they came with some pitiful pretence, begging, I’ll be bound; and I dare say at this moment are laughing at the ease with which their doleful story loosed your purse-strings; ha, ha, ha!”