Читать книгу Chata and Chinita. A Novel онлайн

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“Then, by chance, he learned what here no servant had dared to tell him,—the name of the village to which Herlinda had been sent, so near your own hacienda, too, that he had never once suspected it. And there he met a countryman. These English, Irish, Americans,—they are all bound together by a common language; and he, this poor priest, entirely ignorant of Spanish, coldly received even by his clerical brethren, was glad to spend a few days in a trip with Ashley; and as they rode together over the thirty leagues of mountain and valley between San Marcos and Las Parras, he formed a great liking for the pleasant youth, and beyond gently rallying him, made no opposition to staying over a night in the village, and joining him in holy matrimony to the woman of his choice, whom he imagined to be a poor but pretty peasant, so modest were our surroundings.”

Doña Isabel’s face darkened. “Hasten! hasten!” she muttered. “I see it all; deluded, unhappy girl.”

“Unhappy, yes!” cried the governess. “Prophetic were the tears that coursed over her cheeks, as she went with me to the chapel in the early morning, and there in the presence of a few peasants who had never seen her before, or failed to recognize her under the dingy reboso she wore, was married to the young American.”