Alas!  What events have followed your departure from Matanzas!  What misfortunes have overtaken Esteban and me.  That happiness could be so swiftly succeeded by misery, that want could follow plenty, that peril could tread so closely upon the heels of safety!  Where to begin, how to tell you, I scarcely know; my hand shakes, my eyes are blinded—­nor dare I trust myself to believe that this letter will ever reach you, for we are refugees, Esteban and I—­ fugitives, outcasts, living in the manigua with Asensio and Evangelina, former slaves of our father.  Such poverty, such indescribable circumstances!  But they were our only friends and they took us in when we were homeless, so we love them.

I see you stare at these words.  I hear you say, “That Rosa has gone mad, like her wicked stepmother!” Indeed, sometimes I think I have.  But, no.  I write facts.  It is a relief to put them down, even though you never read them.  Good Asensio will take this letter on his horse to the Insurrecto camp, many miles away, and there give it to Colonel Lopez, our only friend, who promises that in some mysterious way it will escape the eyes of our enemies and reach your country.  Yes, we have enemies!  We, who have harmed no one.  Wait until I tell you.

But if this letter reaches you—­and I send it with a prayer—­what then?  I dare not think too long of that, for the hearts of men are not like the hearts of women.  What will you say when you learn that the Rosa Varona whom you favored with your admiration is not the Rosa of to-day?  I hear you murmur, “The girl forgets herself!” But, oh, the standards of yesterday are gone and my reserve is gone, too!  I am a hunted creature.

O’Reilly felt a great pain in his breast at the thought that Rosa had for an instant doubted him.  But she did not really doubt; those misgivings were but momentary; the abandon of her appeal showed that in her heart of hearts she knew his love to be unshakable.

She had compelled herself to start with the death of Dona Isabel and to give him a succinct account of all that had followed.  O’Reilly read the story, fascinated.  Here, amid these surroundings, with the rattle of typewriters and the tinkle of telephone-bells in his ears, it all seemed wholly improbable, fancifully unreal—­like the workings of some turgid melodrama.

That is how we came to live with Asensio and his wife [the letter went on].  Imagine it!  A bohio, hidden away far up the Yumuri, and so insignificant as to escape attention.  We are no longer people of consequence or authority; our safety depends upon our inconspicuousness.  We hide as do the timid animals, though nature has not given us their skill in avoiding danger.  I do not like the wilderness; it frightens me.  At night I hear things rustling through the thatch above my head; in the morning my feet touch a bare earthen floor.  We live on fruits and vegetables from Evangelina’s garden, with now and then a fowl or a bite of meat when Asensio is fortunate.  Esteban does not seem to mind, but I cannot accommodate myself to these barbarous surroundings.  Sometimes I bite my tongue to keep from complaining, for that, I know, would grieve him.