“Put that woman out,” he gasped as his
glance met hers. “I never sent for her,”
he went on. “You are no longer sister of
mine. It was you who drove me to this quarrel,
and when I have vindicated you what do you do?
Your brother you leave to be tended by hirelings, while
all your thought and care are lavished on your paramour.
Go back to him. I know how to die alone, but
as you go remember that in dying I hated and disowned
you.”
He fell back upon the pillows, livid, dead.
Rubia started forward with a cry.
“It is you who have killed him,” cried
the woman who had summoned her. The rest of Rubia’s
escort, vaqueros, peons, and the old
alcalde of her native village, stood about
with bared heads.
“That is true. That is true,” they
murmured. The old alcalde stepped forward.
“Who dishonours my friend dishonours me,”
he said. “From this day, Senorita Ytuerate,
you and I are strangers.” He went out, and
one by one, with sullen looks and hostile demeanour,
Rubia’s escort followed. Their manner was
unmistakable; they were deserting her.
Rubia clasped her hands over her eyes.
“Madre de Dios, Madre de Dios,” she moaned
over and over again. Then in a low voice she
repeated her own words: “May it be a blight
to her. From that moment may evil cling to her,
bad luck follow her; may she love and not be loved;
may friends desert her, her sisters shame her, her
brothers disown her——”
There was a clatter of horse’s hoofs in the
courtyard.
“It is your lover,” said her woman coldly
from the doorway. “He is riding away from
you.”
“——and those,” added
Rubia, “whom she has loved abandon her.”
Meanwhile Felipe, hatless, bloody, was galloping through
the night, his pony’s head turned toward the
hacienda of Martiarena. The Rancho Martiarena
lay between his own rancho and the inn where he had
met Rubia, so that this distance was not great.
He reached it in about an hour of vigorous spurring.
The place was dark though it was as yet early in the
night, and an ominous gloom seemed to hang about the
house. Felipe, his heart sinking, pounded at
the door, and at last aroused the aged superintendent,
who was also a sort of major-domo in the household,
and who in Felipe’s boyhood had often ridden
him on his knee.
“Ah, it is you, Arillaga,” he said very
sadly, as the moonlight struck across Felipe’s
face. “I had hoped never to see you again.”
“Buelna,” demanded Felipe. “I
have something to say to her, and to the padron.”
“Too late, senor.”
“My God, dead?”
“As good as dead.”
“Rafael, tell me all. I have come to set
everything straight again. On my honour, I have
been misjudged. Is Buelna well?”
