"Doña Carlota, Doña Carlota!" the summons sounded. And fainter, as the door closed, as if he had turned his back, "Doña Carlota!" with impatient clapping of the hands.
Doña Carlota made no haste to appear before her kinsman and learn his pleasure. She stood a moment at Helena's door, a look of supreme satisfaction in her face, crossed the hall to the door opening into the patio and stood a little while looking at the tender morning sun in the leaves of the pepper tree.
"I was right, I was justified; my conscience is clear," she said. "Yes, Don Abrahan. I am here, I am here."
Helena hastened her toilet, oppressed by a dread that made her morning dark. Sleep had been long coming to her last night; she had lain planning and devising, her mind flooded by this breaking down of traditional submission. When sleep came, it had locked her fast, she had heard nothing of the coming and going when the body of the slain man was brought and laid beneath the olive trees. Had she slept while they hunted this trusting stranger and killed him at her very door?
The thought wrung her heart with poignant regret. It seemed equal to betrayal to offer a man sanctuary that she could not insure, a refuge that had become a trap. She had not looked deep enough into Doña Carlota's crafty eyes when she related this tragic intelligence; not deep enough to see that her purpose was only one of leading her young ward on to the betrayal of what hid in her heart. Now Doña Carlota knew; she knew better than Helena herself, or more than Helena would have owned, at least, if confronted with the demand of her own conscience.
Doña Carlota was back at Helena's door while she was still braiding her hair. This time with a summons from Don Abrahan that amounted to a command. As quickly as she could dress she was to attend the pleasure of Don Abrahan in the parlor. It must be something terrible, Doña Carlota said, now unmistakably alarmed. There was a look in Don Abrahan's face to make a woman's heart sink low.
Don Abrahan sat at a small table near the window, papers spread before him; Roberto waited at the door like a butler, closing it behind Helena sharply when she entered, shutting Doña Carlota out with summary rudeness. Don Abrahan rose, tall, gaunt, his roomy clothing loose upon his limbs. Helena stood in questioning hesitation, looking from Don Abrahan to his son. She seemed a stranger in her own house, these two had taken such authoritative control.
Don Abrahan turned his hand in slow, graceful motion to a chair, remaining standing in his punctilious way of deferential grace until she was seated. Roberto stood with his back to the door, his pistol at his side.
This house was not so pretentious as Don Abrahan's, there being nothing grand in its proportions at all, compared with the bright and beautiful homes which stand in that same valley today. It was a squat, flat building of gray adobe, severely simple, conforming in all particulars with the traditional plan of houses of the gentry in California of that period, following the older traditions of an older land. The form was that of a letter E without the centre bar. All rooms faced upon the patio, with doors admitting to it. In the front of the house there was the hall in the centre, a room on either hand; in the wings the kitchen and sleeping rooms.