Don Abrahan lifted his head, his eyes open wide. He put a hand to the table, leaning forward as if to rise.
"What is it you have learned today?" he asked.
Roberto turned from the window to stand with hands on the back of his chair, deliberating his next word, it seemed. He sat down, drew the chair close to the table, leaning confidentially toward his father, eye to the windows to see that nobody loitered near.
"There is something to be told to the shame of this house," he said, with such intense feeling that caused his father to stare. "There is a thing I have kept from you since the night of this ruffianly assault. Now you must hear it, but it burns my heart with shame to speak the words."
"How? What is this thing you preface with such terrible beginning?"
Don Abrahan was thoroughly aroused. He glanced behind him to see that the door letting into the rest of the house was closed; and over his shoulder to make certain that the door opening out of it into the convenient courtyard that might, in time of stress, contain a man's saddled horse, did not show a crack.
"It is the infidelity and disgrace of one that was most dear," Roberto said, his head drooping with shame of the confession. "Helena—it was Helena who met him under the tree that cursed night. It was Helena's slipper that Don Fernando picked up. She lost it when she fled."
"But no, no. Did you see her, my son?"
"I held the shoe a moment before the dog snatched it from me. It was one of the shoes I bought her in Mexico City, silk and fine kid. There is no mistake; there are no shoes of that kind in this country."
"And Don Fernando? You were not fool enough to betray this suspicion to him?"