And in a mournful murmur he would go over the story of his capture and recapture for the twentieth time.  Then, raising his eyes to the silent girl in the doorway, “Si, senorita,” he would say with a deep sigh, “injustice has made this poor breath in my body quite worthless to me and to anybody else.  And I do not care who robs me of it.”

One evening, as he exhaled thus the plaint of his wounded soul, she condescended to say that, if she were a man, she would consider no life worthless which held the possibility of revenge.

She seemed to be speaking to herself.  Her voice was low.  He drank in the gentle, as if dreamy sound with a consciousness of peculiar delight of something warming his breast like a draught of generous wine.

“True, Senorita,” he said, raising his face up to hers slowly:  “there is Estaban, who must be shown that I am not dead after all.”

The mutterings of the mad father had ceased long before; the sighing mother had withdrawn somewhere into one of the empty rooms.  All was still within as well as without, in the moonlight bright as day on the wild orchard full of inky shadows.  Gaspar Ruiz saw the dark eyes of Dona Erminia look down at him.

“Ah!  The sergeant,” she muttered, disdainfully.

“Why!  He has wounded me with his sword,” he protested, bewildered by the contempt that seemed to shine livid on her pale face.

She crushed him with her glance.  The power of her will to be understood was so strong that it kindled in him the intelligence of unexpressed things.

“What else did you expect me to do?” he cried, as if suddenly driven to despair.  “Have I the power to do more?  Am I a general with an army at my back?—­miserable sinner that I am to be despised by you at last.”

VIII

“Senores,” related the General to his guests, “though my thoughts were of love then, and therefore enchanting, the sight of that house always affected me disagreeably, especially in the moonlight, when its close shutters and its air of lonely neglect appeared sinister.  Still I went on using the bridle-path by the ravine, because it was a short cut.  The mad Royalist howled and laughed at me every evening to his complete satisfaction; but after a time, as if wearied with my indifference, he ceased to appear in the porch.  How they persuaded him to leave off I do not know.  However, with Gaspar Ruiz in the house there would have been no difficulty in restraining him by force.  It was now part of their policy in there to avoid anything which could provoke me.  At least, so I suppose.

“Notwithstanding my infatuation with the brightest pair of eyes in Chile, I noticed the absence of the old man after a week or so.  A few more days passed.  I began to think that perhaps these Royalists had gone away somewhere else.  But one evening, as I was hastening towards the city, I saw again somebody in the porch.  It was not the madman; it was the girl.  She stood holding on to one of the wooden columns, tall and white-faced, her big eyes sunk deep with privation and sorrow.  I looked hard at her, and she met my stare with a strange, inquisitive look.  Then, as I turned my head after riding past, she seemed to gather courage for the act, and absolutely beckoned me back.