FullReads

“And is that all?” asked Dick, with a somewhat pronounced laugh, but a face that looked quite white in the moonlight.

“No, it ees NOT all. For when Don Gregorio got himself more company another time–it ees all yonge ladies, and my aunt she is invite too; for she was yonge then, and she herself have tell to me this:–

“One night she is in the garden with the other girls, and when they want to go in the casa one have say, ‘Where is Francisca Pacheco? Look, she came here with us, and now she is not.’ Another one say, ‘She have conceal herself to make us affright.’ And my aunt she say, ‘I will go seek that I shall find her.’ And she go. And when she came to the pear-tree, she heard Francisca’s voice, and it say to some one she see not, ‘Fly! vamos! some one have come.’ And then she come at the moment upon Francisca, very white and trembling, and–alone. And Francisca she have run away and say nossing, and shut herself in her room. And one of the other girls say: ‘It is the handsome caballero with the little black moustache and sad white face that I have seen in the garden that make this. It is truly that he is some poor relation of Don Gregorio, or some mad kinsman that he will not we should know.’ And my aunt ask Don Gregorio; for she is yonge. And he have say: ‘What silly fool ees thees? There is not one caballero here, but myself.’ And when the other young girl have tell to him how the caballero look, he say: ‘The saints save us! I cannot more say. It ees Don Vincente, who haf gone dead.’ And he cross himself, and–But look! Madre de Dios! Mees Cecily, you are ill–you are affrighted. I am a gabbling fool! Help her, Don Ricardo; she is falling!”

But it was too late: Cecily had tried to rise to her feet, had staggered forward and fallen in a faint on the bench.

*****

Dick did not remember how he helped to carry the insensible Cecily to the casa, nor what explanation he had given to the alarmed inmates of her sudden attack. He recalled vaguely that something had been said of the overpowering perfumes of the garden at that hour, that the lively Felipa had become half hysterical in her remorseful apologies, and that Aunt Viney had ended the scene by carrying Cecily into her own room, where she presently recovered a still trembling but reticent consciousness. But the fainting of his cousin and the presence of a real emergency had diverted his imagination from the vague terror that had taken possession of it, and for the moment enabled him to control himself. With a desperate effort he managed to keep up a show of hospitable civility to his Spanish friends until their early departure. Then he hurried to his own room. So bewildered and horrified he had become, and a prey to such superstitious terrors, that he could not at that moment bring himself to the test of looking for the picture of the alleged Rosita, which might still be hanging in his aunt’s room. If it were really the face of his mysterious visitant–in his present terror–he felt that his reason might not stand the shock. He would look at it to-morrow, when he was calmer! Until then he would believe that the story was some strange coincidence with what must have been his hallucination, or a vulgar trick to which he had fallen a credulous victim. Until then he would believe that Cecily’s fright had been only the effect of Dona Felipa’s story, acting upon a vivid imagination, and not a terrible confirmation of something she had herself seen. He threw himself, without undressing, upon his bed in a benumbing agony of doubt.

The gentle opening of his door and the slight rustle of a skirt started him to his feet with a feeling of new and overpowering repulsion. But it was a familiar figure that he saw in the long aisle of light which led from his recessed window, whose face was white enough to have been a spirit’s, and whose finger was laid upon its pale lips, as it softly closed the door behind it.