She caught his hand between both of hers with a passionate gesture.  “Oh, my friend,” she said, “do not too much reproach me!  You never have a child, you cannot know!  And remember we all are not make alike.  If you are me, you act like myself.  If I am you, I can forgive more easy.  But I am Eustaquia Ortega, and as I am make, so I do feel now.  No judge too hard, my friend, and—­infelez de mi! do not forsake me.”

“I will never forsake you, Eustaquia.”  He rose suddenly.  “I, too, am a lonely man, if not a hard one, and I recognize that cry of the soul’s isolation.”

He left her and went up the hill to Benicia’s little house, half hidden by the cypress trees that grew before it.

She was sitting in her sala working an elaborate deshalados on a baby’s gown.  Her face was pale, and the sparkle had gone out of it; but she held herself with all her mother’s pride, and her soft eyes were deeper.  She rose as Captain Brotherton entered, and took his hand in both of hers.  “You are so good to come to me, and I love you for your friendship for my mother.  Tell me how she is.”

“She is well, Benicia.”  Then he exclaimed suddenly:  “Poor little girl!  What a child you are—­not yet seventeen.”

“In a few months, senor.  Sit down.  No?  And I no am so young now.  When we suffer we grow more than by the years; and now I go to have the baby, that make me feel very old.”

“But it is very sad to see you alone like this, without your husband or your mother.  She will relent some day, Benicia, but I wish she would do it now, when you most need her.”

“Yes, I wish I am with her in the old house,” said the girl, pathetically, although she winked back the tears.  “Never I can be happy without her, even si he is here, and you know how I love him.  But I have love her so long; she is—­how you say it?—­like she is part of me, and when she no spik to me, how I can be happy with all myself when part is gone.  You understand, senor?”

“Yes, Benicia, I understand.”  He looked through the bending cypresses, down the hill, upon the fair town.  He had no relish for the task which had brought him to her.  She looked up and caught the expression of his face.

“Senor!” she cried sharply.  “What you go to tell me?”

“There is a report that Ned is slightly wounded; but it is not serious.  It was Altimira who did it, I believe.”

She shook from head to foot, but was calmer than he had expected.  She laid the gown on a chair and stood up.  “Take me to him.  Si he is wound, I go to nurse him.”

“My child!  You would die before you got there.  I have sent a special courier to find out the truth.  If Ned is wounded, I have arranged to have him sent home immediately.”

“I wait for the courier come back, for it no is right I hurt the baby si I can help.  But si he is wound so bad he no can come, then I go to him.  It no is use for you to talk at all, senor, I go.”