Chata and Chinita—Chapters I-XX [pp. 1-11]

1886.] Ch/ata and Chinita. 11
fering no reward —she made that conscience- in; the marriage, if marriage there had been,
stricken and terrified man the keeper of the was secret, unrecorded, illegal. Conscience
honor of the powerful houseof which he was was satisfied, and Dofia Isabel was content
but the veriest minion. to be passive. Why rouse a scandal which
He went out of her presence perplexed, could so easily be avoided? Why strive to
baffled, dazed, with but one word and one prove a marriage which could but bring rid thought clear in his mind-" Silence!" icule upon herself, and shame and contempt
Ten minutes later Doria Isabel sent for upon fIerlinda?
the administrador, and an hour thereafter That day, for the first time in many days,
Dona Feliz left the hacienda. Dofin Isabel could force a smile to her lip;
Three days passed, days of apparent calm for even for policy it had not been possible
at the great house, overshadowed, perhaps, for her to smile before. She was by nature
by the tragedy that had occurred so near it. neither cold nor cruel, but she had been
During these, Dofia Isabel, her daughters and brought up in the midst of petty intrigues,
the governess sat together, Herlinda at times of violent passions and narrow prejudices;
fixing her eyes with a look of horror upon and while she had scorned them, they had
the wall, or clasping her hands convulsively; moulded her mind, as the constant wearing
so that the servant who passed in and oult of rock upon rock forms the hollow in the
declared to her fellows below that she was one, and rounds the jagged surface of the
certain that French woman was reading, in other. What would have been monstrous to
her heathenish language, some tale of dread, her youth became natural to her middle age.
which must be badly chosen at such a time, She had suffered and striven. WVas it not
when every drop of blood in the hearts of the common lot of woman? What more
her pupils must be cold with horror. At the natural than that her daughter should do the
end of those three days Doria Feliz returned. same? and what more natural than that the
mother should raise her who had fallen? Wherever her journey had led her, it had for fallen indeed, in spite of the marriage,
outwardly been unimportant enough to draw would the world think her. But why should
but little comment from the men who had the world know? She pitied her daughter,
attended her, and was speedily forgotten; even as a woman pities another in travail; yet
and she herself gave no description of it, nor she looked to the future, not to the present,
volunteered any information as to its object and so silently, relentlessly, shaped her course,
or result. Even to Doria Isabel, who raised ignoring circumstance, and like a goddess
inquiring eyes to her face as she entered her making a law unto herself, and thus unflinchprivate room, she said, briefly, "No, there ingly ordered the destiny of her child. Could
is no record; absolutely none." she herself have divined the various motives