XXVIII.
“Señor Don Rafael!” cried a hoarse voice at break of day. “Rise, your grace! for strange things have happened while we have slept! Ay, Señor, if the demon himself has not carried away Pedro the gatekeeper, who can tell us how he has gone?”
“Gone!” echoed the voice of Don Rafael from within.
“Gone, Señor, and left not even so much as his shadow; yet the doors are locked, and not even in the postern is there so much as a crack, nor the key in the lock. The muleteers, who were to be upon the road at cock-crow, have waited until both they and their beasts are cramped with standing, and all to no purpose.”
“Is this true?” exclaimed Don Rafael, presently appearing with aserapethrown over his shoulders, and shivering in the morning air. “Ay, man, thou hast a tongue like a woman’s. And Pedro, thou sayest, is gone?”
The man drew one hand sharply across the other, as who should say, “vanished!” though his lips ejaculated, “Gone, Señor; and who is to open the door now that it is shut? And who could shut the door upon Pedro but Satan himself?”
“Who, indeed?” said Don Rafael, gravely. “Think you so bulky a fellow could creep through the keyhole of the postern and take the key with him? By good fortune, he brought me the key of the great door as usual, and here it is. If the Devil hath carried away one gatekeeper on his shoulders, it is but fair he should send me another; and thou, Felipe, shall be the man.”
Felipe stared a moment; then with a transient change of expression which might be of intelligence, or simply a vague smile at his own good fortune, extended his hand for the keys; and suddenly mute with the weight of hisunexpected promotion trudged down the stone stairs, across the silent inner court and the outer one, where by this time the household servants were exchanging exclamations of wonder and alarm with the impatient muleteers. Felipe unlocked the wide doors, threw them open with a clang, sank into Pedro’s place upon the stone bench, and thereafter reigned in his stead.
The wonder of Pedro’s disappearance grew greater and ever greater, until the boy Pepé said sulkily he had been played a shabby trick. Had not he said to Pedro the night before, when the Señor Don Rafael had told them that the General Vicente Gonzales was in El Toro, that for a word he himself would go to him there; and doubtless Pedro had stolen away alone, like the surly fox that he was. But the saints be praised, the road was open to one man as well as another.
“Hush!” said one in a warning tone; “though Pedro may have a fancy for a cleft head or broken bones, must we all cry for the same? Go to thou Pepé! thou art scarce old enough to leave the shade of thy mother’s reboso. Did I not see thee sucking thy thumb but last Saint John’s day?”
There was a roar of laughter, and though Pepé raged, no one heeded his wrath; the talk was all of Pedro. That he had gone to be a soldier was universally believed; that Don Rafael, and not the Devil, had aided his going was not for a moment thought of. The women crossed themselves, and the men spat on the floor emphatically,—yet there had been more mysteries than that in the life of Pedro.
Florencia, who was distraught at her uncle’s disappearance, and tore her hair and bewailed herself as a bereaved niece should, found her way to Chinita to pour out her griefs and fears; although since the change in the young girl’s position they had by common consent ignored their former relations,—Florencia, because of the wide social gulf fixed between the great house and the hovels around it; Chinita, from pure indifference. She was too full of her new life to think of the old, or of the persons connected with it.
It was so early that she was still not fully dressed, and the chocolate wherewith to break her fast stood untouchedupon the table, when the sound of some one sobbing at the door brought a tone of sorrow into thoughts which had simply been vexed before.
Chinita had risen in an ill humor. Doña Rita and Rosario, and even Chata herself, had failed to show any surprise at her position. True, Don Rafael had warned them of it; but at least something more than a kindly indifference might have greeted her,—if only a glance of envy from Rosario. What wonderful things had they all seen, that they had no thoughts to spare for her? Bah! Rosario had neither eyes nor thoughts for any one but the young officer with the red neck-tie. Well, they should see! But what of Doña Rita,—and Chata too? Why, Chinita hardly knew her. Was she also thinking but of herself, like the others? That was a change in Chata, and one that ill-suited her.
Chinita had slept badly for thinking of these things; and truth to tell, when her mind was ill at ease the softness of the bed troubled her. She had dreamed of snakes, of three snakes who had lifted their heads out of water to hiss at her. Here was the first one. Certainly she had not dreamed of snakes for nothing. Well, to be sure, here was Florencia, whom she had almost forgotten, come with some trouble! She felt a little flutter of gratification, and unconsciously assumed the air of apatrona, as she said,—
“Ah, is it then Florencia? And what ails thee; and how can I help thee? What, has Tomasito broken the newest water-jar, or by better fortune his neck? Or has Terecita choked herself with a dry bean?”
“God has not desired to do me such favors,” returned Florencia, piously and with a flood of tears. “No, rather than my children should become little angels, he prefers that they shall be friendless upon the earth.Ay de mi!what is a father, what is a husband (and you know the very driveller of a man I have), what is any one to an uncle who was a gatekeeper of Tres Hermanos?—a veritable treasure of silver, a spring of refreshing! Was there ever a time Florencia asked a shilling of Pedro in vain?”
At another time Chinita would have laughed at this pious exaggeration; now it filled her with inexpressible alarm.
“What! is my god-father dead?” she cried, wringing her hands and for the moment relapsing into the demonstrative gestures and cries of her plebeian training. “Ay Dios, Florencia, it cannot be! Answer me, stupid one! Is thy mouth as full as thy eyes that thou canst not answer?”
“Is chocolate served to the poor at day-break?” cried Florencia in an injured tone, and with a glance at the dainty breakfast; and then at an impatient word from Chinita she explained how Pedro had departed in the night, though the hacienda doors were locked upon the inside, and conjectured that if he had not been spirited away by the Devil, he had gone to join the Liberal General Gonzales,—there could be no other alternative. She had heard Señor Don Rafael talking to him till late in the night of how Gonzales had beaten the General Ramirez at El Toro, and was still there trying to strengthen his forces, while those of the Clergy had disappeared, no one knew where, but surely to gather men and means to recover the lost position.
Chinita’s eyes flashed. She knew nothing of politics, but she thrilled at the name of Ramirez. She laughed scornfully that Pedro should throw his puny strength into the force against him. Still she said, “God keep him;” and jested away Florencia’s fears.
“Bah! What should happen to my god-father?” she said. “And thou knowest thou wilt want for nothing. Hark thou! there is nothing to cry for that thy uncle is gone. Has he not often told us of the dollars he made in the wars?”
“I fear me he is likely rather to receive hard blows than hard dollars now,” answered Florencia, disconsolately,—an expression of expectancy, however, relieving her doleful countenance, as she added, “Ah, Chinita of my soul, thou wert ever the kerchief to wipe away my tears.”
Chinita laughed. “Thou used to say I was a prickly pear to draw tears, rather than a kerchief to dry them,” she presently said, pushing her chocolate toward Florencia, and thrusting into her hand the little twists of bread.
“There, take them; I would a thousand times ratherhave a thick cake and a drink of white gruel. One is not always in the humor for sweets;” and she tugged viciously at the hair she tried vainly to smooth,—she was always at feud with it because it was not longer. But at last she confined it in two short tresses, tying each with a red ribbon; and then suddenly dropping on her knees before Florencia, placed her hands palm downward upon the floor, and looking up in the woman’s face with a laugh exclaimed, as a tinge of red deepened the olive of her complexion, “And what of the American, Florencia? Is he like him thou sayest the Señorita Herlinda loved?”
“Ave Maria Purissima!” cried the startled woman. “The saints forbid that I should say such a thing of a Garcia, and she dedicated to the Madonna!” But recovering herself, “Certainly this American is like the other. Is not one cactus like another that grows on the same mountain? Should a white-blooded American be like a cavalier of blue-blood, or like an Indian of the villages? Yet both, one and the other, are we not Mexicans?” and she uttered the words as one might say, “Are we not gods?”
“That is very true,” commented Chinita, gravely; “and yet they are not frights, these Americans. Why should not the Señorita Herlinda have loved one if it pleased her? Listen, Florencia; I will tell thee a dream I had one night. When one’s bed is too soft, one dreams dreams.”
Florencia looked at the girl with an admiring glance. How amiable she could be, this Chinita, when she chose. “Little puss! little puss!” she murmured, giving her the pet name Pedro had used, when in her kittenish moods one had never known whether she would scratch or fondle one with soft purrings, begun and ended in a moment. “Little puss! thou wert ever good to thy Florencia.”
“Thou art a flatterer!” ejaculated Chinita, half-inclined to withhold her confidence, yet longing for a listener. “Ay, Florencia, thou knowest not what it is to sit for hours in the gloom within four walls. Ah, what thoughts come into one’s head! When I ran about the village, the wind blew the thoughts about as it did my hair; but now my brains are like cobwebs, and when a thought touches themit clings like dust, and so they grow thicker and heavier until my very skull aches;” and she pressed her head with her hands, and heaved a deep sigh.
“But to think is not to dream,” said Florencia, in some disappointment, for she had a child’s love for the marvellous, and did not understand Chinita’s abstractions,—unstudied and simple though they were.
“But dreams come from thoughts,” answered Chinita; “and what should I think of here but of mysteries,—such as why the Señora should keep me with her, though she loves me not; why she walks the floor and counts her beads, and when she forgets I am in the room murmurs over and over the name of Herlinda; why she looks before her sometimes, as you used to tell me the woman looked who saw the ghost of the American,—and that is always when she chances to meet this Don ’Guardo whom she will not speak of, or suffer Doña Feliz to invite to our table, though he stays here so long. And after I have asked so many things, I set myself to the answer. Oh, you would wonder at what I say to myself of all these things,—and then sometimes come dreams to tell me I am right.”
Florencia looked at the door vaguely,—she was thinking perhaps she had better go.
“Yes, yes,” continued Chinita, as if to herself, “I am growing perhaps like the owl,—I, who in the broad sunlight saw nothing, have discovered many things here in the dark. Well, well, Florencia, one thought came to me on a vexed night when I could not sleep. I had been talking to Doña Feliz that day. I know not why, but I am with Doña Feliz like the young fox my god-father tamed,—when I touched him with my hand he was pleased, yet he bristled and longed to bite. Good! we had talked that day. Yes,—it was of the nuns, and she said the Señora might desire I should be one; and I was angry, and said I would not be shut up to pray as the Señorita Herlinda had been; and then Doña Feliz bade me be silent and ponder what she had said. And after she went away it was not of myself I thought, but of the Señorita Herlinda; and in the midst of my thoughts I saw the American pass the court, and Doña Isabel, who was near, turned herself away, as if an adder had darted upon her.”
Florencia looked up with a mute inquiry or fascination inher gaze. Chinita, in a sort of monotone, followed the thread of her thoughts.
“When I went to sleep at last, I dreamed that I, though still Chinita, was Herlinda, and that the American who was lying wounded in the room below came up the stairs, and tapped lightly at my window. I stepped softly and looked out at him through the grating. Ah, it was this Don ’Guardo, yet so different, as a man is different from his reflection in a glass; and I did not wonder to see him there. I put my hand out and touched him, and was happy. And as I stood at the bars,—I myself, and yet theniñaHerlinda,—the man of my dream said, as a husband says to his wife, ‘Open, my life;’ and when I opened the door he led in by the hand a little child,—I knew it to be his child, though it had not blue eyes nor the yellow hair. Well, I stood there, and stood there, and strove to speak and could not; and the vision of the man and of the child faded, and the thought that I was still Herlinda faded too, and the dream was ended.”
She ceased speaking, and looked at Florencia with a vague yet searching gaze.
“By my faith, a strange dream!” murmured Florencia, disquieted. “You should have lighted a blessed candle when you woke, and passed it before you three times, saying anAveeach time. Santa Inez! I would rather see the ghost of the American than dream such a dream!”
“Coward! it frightened me not,” continued the girl. “And I did not seem to wake, though I knew that I, Chinita, lay in the bed, and that my head sank deep in the soft pillow, and that I could not or would not raise it; and the meaning of the dream crept into my mind, as the light creeps into a dark room. Yes, I felt as I used to when I saw the little green blades shoot up in the spring, and I could think how the corn would grow, and the leaves would wave, and the maize would lie in the silk and the yellow sheath; and so I had thought of what I had heard,—of the love of Herlinda for the American, and what might have come of it.”
“Hush!” interrupted Florencia with a scared look. “You said you dreamed of a child. Did you see its face?”
“No,” answered Chinita, slowly. “But what need that I should see it?”
The two had risen as if by one impulse, and looked into each other’s eyes. The woman was awed as much by the penetration and daring of the young girl’s mind as by the thought that for the first time arose within her.
She cast her thoughts back. She had been young when the American was murdered, when the Señorita Herlinda had left the hacienda never to return, when the child had been found at the gate; yet she wondered that she had been so blind to what now appeared so plain, and that all alike—the wise and simple, the old and young—had been so utterly dazzled by the glamor that surrounded the family of Garcia that no suspicion of dishonor might attach to its women, or of cowardice to its men. Surely none other than Herlinda Garcia would have escaped the lynx-eyed Selsa, or a score of other scandal-loving women! Curiously enough, while a feeling of detraction for the nun, whom she had long been used to canonize in her thoughts, stole into her mind, a sensation of traditional reverence for the Garcia arose for the young girl before her. Florencia’s ideas of morality were perhaps vague on all points; they certainly did not reach that of aspersion of the innocent fruit of another’s fault.
“Ay,niña,” the woman said at last with a gasp, “it is not every one who drinks red wine that is happy. Thanks to God, the peasant woman who carries a burden in her arms too soon needs only to suckle it under her scarf, like any mother, and needs not to close upon herself the doors of a convent. Santa Maria! who would have thought such things of theniñaHerlinda?”
“Be silent!” cried Chinita, with a tardy repentance of her confidence. “How do I know that I am not the worst of evil thinkers, and a fool, a very fool? Look thou, Florencia, it is thou who shall discover the truth for me. Pedro is gone; perhaps he never knew it. The Tio Reyes must know; but where is he? Yet Imustknow. Oh, I could bear the truth from Feliz, from Doña Isabel; but they are as silent and as sorrowful as the image of the Madre Dolores. It is thou, Florencia, who must help me. Oh, it will be but a diversion for thee. Thou shalt talk of thy Tio Pedro, and of the day I was dropped in his hand, and of the days that went before. Thou canst talk now of the murder of the American, and of the Señorita Herlindatoo, and there will be no Pedro to chide thee. And see,—” as the woman began some faint objection,—“I have all the pretty things Pedro gave me, and money too; yes, more than thou wouldst think. And thou shalt never miss thy uncle; thou shalt have them all, if thou wilt but talk to the old women of things that happened here before the time of the great sickness. But, Florencia, thou must tell them nothing. Oh, if I could only run again in and out of the village huts as I used to do!”
Florencia looked at the excited girl with a nod of intelligence. “Have no fear,” she said; “it is not possible that Florencia knows not how to manage her own tongue, though no one knows better than thyself it was ever a quiet one. But it shall wag now, and not like the dog’s tail, in mere idleness.”
Chinita laughed, then glancing around her warily, drew from her bosom a small gold coin. She had evidently prepared herself for a chance meeting with Florencia.
“Take it,” she said, “and go. Thou hast been here too long already; and,” she added with the flush of red again tingeing her face, “talk and gossip when the American is near. He must be sad,—it will cheer him to hear the voices, even if he understands but little; and if by chance he speaks to thee, why! thou shalt tell me what he says.”
Florencia had experienced one great surprise that morning, and here was another; the first had awed, the second delighted her. Like all her race she had the instincts of secrecy and intrigue, and suddenly the opportunity to practise both were offered her. She looked at Chinita with a glance of infinite cunning in her soft dark eyes; but the young girl would not meet her gaze. “Go, go!” she said impatiently; “you have been here too long. The Señora is coming—or is it Doña Feliz? Go! go, I say!”
It was neither Doña Isabel nor Feliz, but only Chata, who entered with a preoccupied air, scarcely noticing the woman who passed her on the threshold. She did not speak, however, until Florencia had reluctantly passed out of hearing; and then she cried eagerly, “Chinita! Chinita! who is the stranger who stood with thee at the doorway? God bless us! I thought I saw the ghost ofthe American we used to talk of; and but now I met him below in the court. Who is he? What is he here for?”
“That remains to be seen,” answered Chinita, with an uneasy laugh. Her hasty confidence in Florencia troubled her, and closed her lips toward the friend for whom she had hitherto longed. “At least the stranger is no ghost; yet how can we know that the man who was murdered here so many years before was anything to him?”
“But I do know,” insisted Chata. “I had gone to the arbor, thinking thou mightest be there, to break my fast. I was standing in the centre, with my eyes turned toward this room, thinking I should see thee leave it, and thinking too of theniñaHerlinda,—O Chinita! she is still so beautiful,—when I heard a step behind me. It was a strange step, and I turned quickly and saw the American looking at me as if he too believed he saw a ghost. Was it not strange, Chinita? We looked at each other quite steadily for many moments, then he said,—
“‘Pardon me, you are then the daughter of the administrador? You came here yesterday?’
“I could scarcely make out his words, yet I understood what he said, and I seemed to know that he had taken me for another,—perhaps for thee, Chinita; and then again he said, ‘Pardon me! Pardon me!’ and we still continued to look at each other; and I did not think how bold I must appear until the other stranger, the young officer who loves Rosario, stepped out of the room they have given him. I heard his spurs clank on the pavement, and then I fled away to thee. But for the fright, I should not have dared to come hither, Chinita. All yesterday my grandmother kept me from thee. She said now thou art the child of Doña Isabel, and that without leave I must not go to thee.”
“Chata, thou hast a poor spirit!” exclaimed Chinita, with some severity,—though she remembered with impatient anger that Doña Isabel had kept her in the garden at her side, on pretence of showing her the strings of irregular pearls, which she should some day arrange in even strands. Doña Isabel had made no promise, but Chinita could almost see them in the future bedecking her own neck and arms. She had been beguiled,even as Chata had been commanded, to keep apart from her old playmate.
“There is a mystery in it all!” she exclaimed. “Though I am here with Doña Isabel, I know not who I am. It is intolerable! Sometimes I fear I am but her plaything, with no more right to her notice than had the fawn I found on the river bank and petted, till it died from very heartbreak because it longed so for the mountains and its kind. And so I long, Chata. Ah, thou knowest not what it is to be a nameless wretch, to be tossed from hand to hand, and have no share in the game but the dizzy whirling through the air. Pshaw! I would rather be dashed to pieces against the first wall than go through life with nothing but favor to rely on. I want a name, a place, a right. I will have them: even you, who are the daughter of the administrador, have those; and I—Well, I will not be simplyChinita, whom Doña Isabel makes a lady to-day, who was a child of the Madonna yesterday, and may be a beggar to-morrow.”
Chata had been leaning on the arm and pressing her head against the shoulder of Chinita. She raised it now with a sharp low cry, and turned away. Little guessed the impetuous, ambitious foundling how her words tortured and taunted the other, who longed to cry out, “I too am no one! I too am a stray, a waif, and if I know my father, know him only as a terror,—a horror.” Her promise to Doña Rita silenced her. She felt there was but one person in the world to whom she would break her promise,—the pale, sweet-faced nun of the convent of El Toro. In her passionate, bitter mood Chinita chilled and silencedher.her.She did not even tell her that as she hastened from the arbor the American had caught the end of her flying reboso, as if by an irresistible impulse, and cried: “I am Ashley Ward! Ashley! Ashley! remember the name!”
Remember it! it seemed to Chata as if she had always known the man as well as the name, which had ever before been to her the symbol of the dead rather than of the living. That she should have seen the Señorita Herlinda, whom she had always known to be alive, seemed more wonderful, more incredible to her mind, than that the young man should have risen before her to claim thename of the murdered foreigner. Now that he had come, she seemed all her life to have been expecting him. She did not see him again for days, but all that time the expression of his eyes haunted her. She could not fathom it. She did not guess it had been but a reflection of the surprise, yet conviction, in her own.
Chata did not again transgress the commands of Doña Feliz; nor did she remain long enough with Chinita in her first visit to be tempted into further confidence. Indeed, they parted with something like a quarrel, as they had been used to do in their childhood’s days. Rosario’s name had been mentioned, and Chinita had with some scorn commented both on her sentimental air and the indifference of her lover.
“Did he love her at El Toro?” she asked with the laugh that was so mocking. “He stood for an hour, you say, at the corner of the street waiting for a glance from her; he wrote verses by day and sang them by night beneath her window? Well, he stood from noon till night yesterday with his eyes turned upward,—one would have thought he had never gazed at anything lower than the sky; yet it was only for a glimpse ofmyface, and a single glance from my eyes dazzled and blinded him. Thank Heaven, he dare not tune a guitar beneath my windows for fear of Doña Isabel, or I should be tormented with all the old rhymes changed from Rosario to Chinita. Ah, there are likings and likings, and this pretty soldier is one who would try them all!”
“Chinita,” cried Chata in indignation, “you are false, you are cruel! Rosario has done nothing to you that you should torment her. I understand nothing of such things as Rosario does; though I am her age, she seems to be a woman while I am still a child. But she says she loves Fernando, and for love a woman’s heart may break.”
Chata was thinking of the pale, sad nun; but Chinita threw herself into a chair and broke into a peal of laughter. It rang through the silent house, and startled Doña Isabel in the further chamber. She started nervously and clasped her hands over her ears.
“What a strange child it is.” she murmured, “Ah, I should have loved her if—” She glanced at a note shehad just written. It was addressed to Vicente Gonzales, and promised him a thousand mounted soldiers.
Doña Isabel made no idle promises, and she had counted well the cost when she had thus irrevocably committed herself to the cause of the Liberals. She had watched for years the course of events, and none saw more clearly than she that the time for passiveness had gone. On every hand there must necessarily be sacrifice. “That which goes not in sighs, must in tears,” she said sententiously. “I like not the Indian Juarez, yet his policy promises deliverance from the vampire that for generations has grown strong and ever stronger, as it has drained the very life of the nation.”
The knowledge that Gonzales was in El Toro enjoying the prestige of an accidental victory, but with a force entirely insufficient to meet that which Ramirez might at any day bring against him, had been the immediate cause of her action. To reward Pedro with a service which should at once remove him from her sight and fill his mind with new and absorbing interests, were the reasons why he had been chosen to ride from rancho to rancho secretly inciting the men to join the standard, which was to be raised upon the morrow.
“Ah, this Ruiz is a poor tool!” muttered Doña Isabel, “yet for that reason may be the more readily bought. He loves the daughter of my administrador, and will do much to gain my good word. Rafael says he is a brave soldier, if a false one; and there will be those with him who will guard against treachery. He shall fulfil his empty offer to lead a thousand men to Gonzales, and claim of Rafael the reward he sighs for. Ah, there is the child’s laugh again,—I could almost fancy it in mockery of me! Ah, this of patriot is a newrôlefor me, and tries my nerves. Well, Chinita shall laugh while she can: if it is for long, it will prove her none of the blood of Garcia. Was there ever a happy woman among them?”
While Doña Isabel pondered thus, Chata in deep indignation had turned from her whilom friend. She had been brought up among a people who in matters of love held man excused and woman guilty in all cases of inconstancy. “Farewell!” she exclaimed, “I will come no more to youwho are so cruel. Doña Isabel was right to part us; she has changed your heart as she has your fortune. Ah!” she added bitterly, “all the world is changed to me, and why not you?”
The grieved and imbittered girl went out so quickly that Chinita’s answer did not reach her. As she passed through the corridor Chata glanced down. The young officer stood there, as Chinita had described. He would catch the first glimpse of her as she left her room. Chata flushed in anger, yet tears of pity rose to her eyes. She was still a child, yet her heart foretold what might be the agony of woman’s slighted love.
Even so soon Chinita was laughing no longer; she had crouched forward and sat with her face bent almost to her knees. “What have I done?” she asked herself. “It is early morning still, and I have told a secret to a fool, and offended her I should have trusted!”
She had eaten nothing; the excitement under which she had acted suddenly expired, and she burst into sobs and tears. Doña Feliz coming in a few minutes later, found her on her knees before the little image of her patron saint, passionately vowing the gift of a silverChristoin return for the boon she craved.
“Go to the corridor, my child,” said Feliz pityingly. The girl was a problem to her, which every day seemed more difficult of solution. “You look weary and ill; but console yourself,—Pedro is safe. You will see the good foster-father again, be assured.”
Chinita looked at her in astonishment. She had for the time forgotten Pedro’s very existence. Doña Feliz discerned at once that she had credited the girl with a sensibility to which she was a stranger. Five minutes later she was quite certain of it, as Chinita sat on the corridor, apparently equally unconscious of the impassioned glances of Ruiz, or those of the invisible but infuriate Rosario, drawing the threads of some dainty linen and singing,—
Sale la Linda,Sale la fea,Sale el enano,Con su galea.“The beauty comes out,The ugly one too;Then comes the dwarf,With a gay halloo.”
Sale la Linda,Sale la fea,Sale el enano,Con su galea.“The beauty comes out,The ugly one too;Then comes the dwarf,With a gay halloo.”
Sale la Linda,Sale la fea,Sale el enano,Con su galea.
Sale la Linda,
Sale la fea,
Sale el enano,
Con su galea.
“The beauty comes out,The ugly one too;Then comes the dwarf,With a gay halloo.”
“The beauty comes out,
The ugly one too;
Then comes the dwarf,
With a gay halloo.”
As unstudied and inconsequent as the meaningless words of the song seemed the actions of the singer, but Feliz shook her head, and met Doña Isabel with a face that was even more serious than its wont. The problem became to her mind each day more complicated. Would the result be bitterness, and that grief most dreaded by the proud heart of Doña Isabel Garcia,—the grief and bitterness of shame?