With startled eyes she watched him move away from her, and bit her lip.
Fortunately, Aunt Isabel came along, and she had sufficient strength left to catch hold of the old lady’s skirt.
“Aunt!” she murmured.
“What’s the matter?” asked the old lady, frightened by the look on the girl’s face.
“Take me to my room!” she pleaded, grasping her aunt’s arm in order to rise.
“Are you sick, daughter? You look as if you’d lost your bones! What’s the matter?”
“A fainting spell—the people in the room—so many lights—I need to rest. Tell father that I’m going to sleep.”
“You’re cold. Do you want some tea?”
Maria Clara shook her head, entered and locked the door of her chamber, and then, her strength failing her, she fell sobbing to the floor at the feet of an image.
“Mother, mother, mother mine!” she sobbed.
Through the window and a door that opened on the azotea the moonlight entered. The musicians continued to play merry waltzes, laughter and the hum of voices penetrated into the chamber, several times her father, Aunt Isabel, Doña Victorina, and even Linares knocked at the door, but Maria did not move. Heavy sobs shook her breast.
Hours passed—the pleasures of the dinner-table ended, the sound of singing and dancing was heard, the candle burned itself out, but the maiden still remained motionless on the moonlit floor at the feet of an image of the Mother of Jesus.
Gradually the house became quiet again, the lights were extinguished, and Aunt Isabel once more knocked at the door.
“Well, she’s gone to sleep,” said the old woman, aloud. “As she’s young and has no cares, she sleeps like a corpse.”
When all was silence she raised herself slowly and threw a look about her. She saw the azotea with its little arbors bathed in the ghostly light of the moon.
“An untroubled future! She sleeps like a corpse!” she repeated in a low voice as she made her way out to the azotea.
The city slept. Only from time to time there was heard the noise of a carriage crossing the wooden bridge over the river, whose undisturbed waters reflected
smoothly the light of the moon. The young woman raised her eyes toward a sky as clear as sapphire. Slowly she took the rings from her fingers and from her ears and removed the combs from her hair. Placing them on the balustrade of the azotea, she gazed toward the river.
A small banka loaded with zacate stopped at the foot of the landing such as every house on the bank of the river has. One of two men who were in it ran up the stone stairway and jumped over the wall, and a few seconds later his footsteps were heard on the stairs leading to the azotea.
Maria Clara saw him pause on discovering her, but only for a moment. Then he advanced slowly and stopped within a few paces of her. Maria Clara recoiled.
“Crisostomo!” she murmured, overcome with fright.
“Yes, I am Crisostomo,” replied the young man gravely. “An enemy, a man who has every reason for hating me, Elias, has rescued me from the prison into which my friends threw me.”
A sad silence followed these words. Maria Clara bowed her head and let her arms fall.
Ibarra went on: “Beside my mother’s corpse I swore that I would make you happy, whatever might be my destiny! You can have been faithless to your oath, for she was not your mother; but I, I who am her son, hold her memory so sacred that in spite of a thousand difficulties I have come here to carry mine out, and fate has willed that I should speak to you yourself. Maria, we shall never see each other again—you are young and perhaps some day your conscience may reproach you—I have come to tell you, before I go away forever, that I forgive you. Now, may you be happy and—farewell!”
Ibarra started to move away, but the girl stopped him.
“Crisostomo,” she said, “God has sent you to save me from desperation. Hear me and then judge me!”
Ibarra tried gently to draw away from her. “I didn’t come to call you to account!
I came to give you peace!”
“I don’t want that peace which you bring me. Peace I will give myself. You despise me and your contempt will embitter all the rest of my life.”
Ibarra read the despair and sorrow depicted in the suffering girl’s face and asked her what she wished.
“That you believe that I have always loved you!”
At this he smiled bitterly.
“Ah, you doubt me! You doubt the friend of your childhood, who has never hidden a single thought from you!” the maiden exclaimed sorrowfully. “I understand now! But when you hear my story, the sad story that was revealed to me during my illness, you will have mercy on me, you will not have that smile for my sorrow. Why did you not let me die in the hands of my ignorant physician? You and I both would have been happier!”
Resting a moment, she then went on: “You have desired it, you have doubted me! But may my mother forgive me! On one of the sorrowfulest of my nights of suffering, a man revealed to me the name of my real father and forbade me to love you—except that my father himself should pardon the injury you had done him.”
Ibarra recoiled a pace and gazed fearfully at her.
“Yes,” she continued, “that man told me that he could not permit our union, since his conscience would forbid it, and that he would be obliged to reveal the name of my real father at the risk of causing a great scandal, for my father is—”
And she murmured into the youth’s ear a name in so low a tone that only he could have heard it.
“What was I to do? Must I sacrifice to my love the memory of my mother, the honor of my supposed father, and the good name of the real one? Could I have done that without having even you despise me?”
“But the proof! Had you any proof? You needed proofs!” exclaimed Ibarra, trembling with emotion.
The maiden snatched two papers from her bosom.
