"Ah, you think I can't read your face," and Chiquita smiled in turn. "Señorita," she continued with sudden emphasis, "you love the Señor!" Blanch started, the attack was so sudden, her face coloring in spite of her endeavor to conceal her confusion.
"Yes, Señorita, you love him."
"How do you know I love him?" laughed Blanch lightly in turn, by this time thoroughly mistress of herself. "Why, you have only met me for the first time!"
"How do I know? Because I am a woman. I saw you as you spoke to him. Your whole manner betrayed you—your voice, your eyes. Yes, Señorita," she added with growing passion, fixing her dark piercing eyes on those of Blanch, "you laughed because a poor girl like me of a different race and color, a race despised by you white people, should have imagined that Captain Forest might possibly cast his eyes upon her—"
"Señorita!" cried Blanch protestingly.
"It is the truth," continued Chiquita passionately, "and what is more, I will tell you frankly that I—I, too, love the Señor!"
"I thought so!" exclaimed Blanch.
"Yes, I love him—love him as you do—love him as you can never love him, Señorita!"
"What makes you think so?" asked Blanch, endeavoring to stifle the emotion Chiquita's passionate words aroused within her.
"I know it," she answered quietly; "something tells me so. And should he not love me as I love him, my life will go out of me swiftly and silently like the waters of the streams in summer when the rains cease; my soul will become barren and parched like the desert, and I shall wither and die."