“My Senora! Listen! You yourself also--you will die. You that are really weak--so broken-hearted--”
Then a miracle occurred. The Senora threw off the nightmare of selfish sorrow and spiritual sentimentality which had held her in bondage. She took the cigarito from her lips with a scornful air, and repeated the words of Luis:
“Is in my care. Her mother’s care! do you understand?”
“Saints in heaven! But this is intolerable! Go.”
Then Rachela closed the door with a clang which echoed through the house. And say as we will, the malice of the wicked is never quite futile. It was impossible after this interruption to recall the happy spirit dismissed by it; and Rachela had the consolation, as she muttered beside the fire in the Senora’s room, this conviction. So that when she heard the party breaking up half an hour afterwards, she complimented herself upon her influence.
“Will Jack come and see me soon, and the Senor Doctor?” questioned the Senora, anxiously, as she held the hand of Luis in parting.
“Jack is on a secret message to General Houston. His return advices will find us, I trust, in San Antonio. But until we have taken the city, no American can safely enter it. For this reason, when it was necessary to give Lopez Navarro certain instructions, I volunteered to bring them. By the Virgin of Guadalupe! I have had my reward,” he said, lifting the Senora’s hand and kissing it.
“Si! If I am discovered; but, blessed be the hand of God! Luis Alveda knows where he is going, and how to get there.”
“I have heard,” said the Senora in a hushed voice, “that there are to be no prisoners. That is Santa Anna’s order.”
“I heard it twenty days ago, and am still suffocating over it.”
“Ah, Luis, you do not know the man yet! I heard Fray Ignatius say that.”
“We know him well; and also what he is capable of”; and Luis plucked his mustache fiercely, as he bowed a silent farewell to the ladies.
“Holy Maria! How brave he is!” said Isabel, with a flash of pride that conquered her desire to weep. “How brave he is! Certainly, if he meets Santa Anna, he will kill him.”
They went very quietly up-stairs. The Senora was anticipating the interview she expected with Rachela, and, perhaps wisely, she isolated herself in an atmosphere of sullen and haughty silence. She would accept nothing from her, not even sympathy or flattery; and, in a curt dismission, managed to make her feel the immeasurable distance between a high-born lady of the house of Flores, and a poor manola that she had taken from the streets of Madrid. Rachela knew the Senora was thinking of this circumstance; the thought was in her voice, and it cowed and snubbed the woman, her nature being essentially as low as her birth.