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“Absurd!” ejaculated the governess. “Doña Isabel, like every one else in the world, must submit to the inevitable.”

“So John said; but, Mademoiselle, neither you nor John know my mother, nor my people. She will never forgive: in her place, I would never forgive!”

“And yet you dared!” cried Mademoiselle La Croix, looking at the young girl with new admiration at the courage which stimulated her own. “Truly, you Mexicans are a strange people, so generous in many things, so blind and obstinate in others. Well, well! you shall find, Herlinda, I too can be brave. If I were a coward, I should say, wait until I am safely away; but I am no coward,” added the little woman, drawing her figure to its full height and expanding her nostrils,—“I am ready to face the storm with you.”

“Yes, yes!” said the young girl, hurriedly and abstractedly. “What,” she added, rising in her bed, and grasping the bronze pillar at the head, “what is that I hear? What a confusion of voices!” She turned deadly pale, and her white-robed figure shook beneath the long loose tresses of her coal-black hair. “My God! Mademoiselle, I hear his name!”