"What is the matter?" cried the old lady, terrified at the face of her niece. "You are ill, my child. You are ready to faint. What is it?"

"My heart--it's the crowd--so much light--I must rest. Tell my father I've gone to rest," and steadying herself by her aunt's arm, she went to her room.

"You are cold! Do you want some tea?" asked Aunt Isabel at the door.

Maria shook her head. "Go back, dear aunt, I only need to rest,"

she said. She locked the door of her little room, and at the end of her strength, threw herself down before a statue, sobbing:

"Mother, mother, my mother!"

The moonlight came in through the window, and through the door leading to the balcony. The joyous music of the dance, peals of laughter and the hum of conversation, made their way to the chamber. Many times they knocked at her door--her father, her aunt, Dona Victorina, even Linares. Maria did not move or speak; now and then a hoa.r.s.e sob escaped her.

Hours pa.s.sed. After the feast had come the ball. Maria's candle had burned out, and she lay in the moonlight at the foot of the statue. She had not moved. Little by little the house became quiet. Aunt Isabel came to knock once again at the door.

"She must have gone to bed," the old lady called back to her brother. "At her age one sleeps like the dead."

When all was still again, Maria rose slowly, and looked out on the terrace with its vines bathed in the white moonlight.

"A peaceful future!--Sleep like the dead!" she said aloud; and she went out.

The city was mute; only now and then a carriage could be heard crossing the wooden bridge. The girl raised her eyes toward the sky; then slowly she took off her rings, the pendants in her ears, the comb and jewelled pins in her hair, and put them on the bal.u.s.trade of the terrace; then she looked toward the river.

A little bark, loaded with zacate, drew up to the landing-place below the terrace. One of the two men in it climbed the stone steps, sprang over the wall, and in a moment was mounting the stairway of the terrace. At sight of Maria, he stopped, then approached slowly.

Maria drew back.

"Crisostomo!" she said, speaking low. She was terrified.

"Yes, I am Crisostomo," replied the young man gravely. "An enemy, a man who has reason to hate me, Elias, has rescued me from the prison where my friends put me."

A sad silence followed his words. Maria Clara bent her head. Ibarra went on:

"By the dead body of my mother, I pledged myself, whatever my future, to try to make you happy. I have risked all that remains to me, to come and fulfil that promise. Chance lets me speak to you, Maria; we shall never see each other again. You are young now; some day your conscience may upbraid you. Before I go away forever, I have come to say that I forgive you. Be happy--farewell!" And he began to move away; she held him back.

"Crisostomo!" she said, "G.o.d has sent you to save me from despair. Listen and judge me!"

Ibarra tried gently to release himself.

"I did not come to call you to account; I came to bring you peace."

"I want none of the peace you bring me. I shall find peace for myself. You scorn me and your scorn will make even death bitter."

He saw despair in her poor, young face, and asked what she wished.

"I wish you to believe that I have always loved you."

He smiled bitterly.

"Ah! you doubt me! you doubt your childhood's friend, who has never hidden a single thought from you! When you know my history, the sad story that was told me in my illness, you will pity me; you will no longer wear that smile. Why did they not let me die in the hands of my ignorant doctor! You and I should both have been happier!"

She stopped a moment, then went on:

"You force me to this, by your doubts; may my mother forgive me! In one of the most painful of my nights of suffering, a man revealed to me the name of my real father. If he had not been my father, this man said, he might have pardoned the injury you had done him."

Crisostomo looked at Maria in amazement.

"What was I to do?" she went on. "Ought I to sacrifice to my love the memory of my mother, the honor of him who was supposed to be my father, and the good name of him who is? And could I have done this without bringing dishonor upon you too?"

"But the proof--have you had proof? There must be proof!" said Crisostomo, staggered.

Maria drew from her breast two papers.

"Here are two letters of my mother's," she said, "written in her remorse. Take them! Read them! My father left them in the house where he lived so many years. This man found them and kept them, and only gave them up to me in exchange for your letter, as a.s.surance, he said, that I would not marry you without my father's consent. I sacrificed my love! Who would not for a mother dead and two fathers living? Could I foresee what use they would make of your letter? Could I know I was sacrificing you too?"

Ibarra was speechless. Maria went on:

"What remained for me to do? Could I tell you who my father was? Could I bid you ask his pardon, when he had so made your father suffer? Could I say to my father, who perhaps would have pardoned you--could I say I was his daughter? Nothing remained but to suffer, to guard my secret, and die suffering! Now, my friend, now that you know the sad story of your poor Maria, have you still for her that disdainful smile?"

"Maria, you are a saint!"

"I am blessed, because you believe in me----"

"And yet," said Crisostomo, remembering, "I heard you were to marry----"

"Yes," sobbed the poor child, "my father demands this sacrifice; he has loved me, nourished me, and it did not belong to him to do it. I shall pay him my debt of grat.i.tude by a.s.suring him peace through this new connection, but----"

"But?"

"I shall not forget my vows to you."

"What is your thought?" asked Ibarra, trying to read in her clear eyes.

"The future is obscure. I do not know what I shall do; but I know this, that I can love but once, and that I shall not belong to one I do not love. And you? What will you do?"

"I am no longer anything but a fugitive--I shall fly, and my flight will soon be overtaken, Maria----"

Maria took his head in her hands, kissed his lips again and again, then pushed him away with all her strength.

"Fly, fly!" she said. "Adieu!"

Ibarra looked at her with shining eyes, but she made a sign, and he went, reeling for an instant like a drunken man. He leaped the wall again, and was back in the little bark. Maria Clara, leaning on the bal.u.s.trade, watched till it disappeared in the distance.

LIII.