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Apparently with an instinct of concealment, Herlinda had crouched upon the stones, and as the man stood before her she raised her face and gazed at him with her dark eyes. How large they looked in the uncertain light! how the young face quivered and was convulsed, as her lips parted! Pedro, with an inward shrinking, expected her to demand of him the name of Ashley’s murderer; but the thought of vengeance, if it ever crossed her mind, was far from it at that moment. “Yes, yes, there is perhaps something you can do for me,” she said. “Men are able to do so much, while we poor women can only fold our hands, and wait and suffer. I thought differently once, though. John used to laugh at what he called our idle ways; he said women were made to act as well as men. But what can I do? What could any woman do in my place? Nothing! nothing! nothing!”

Pedro was silent. He knew well how powerless, what a mere chattel or toy, was a young woman of his people. It seemed, too, quite natural and right to him. In this particular case the mother was acting with incomparable severity, but she was within her right. Even while he pitied the child, it did not enter his mind to counsel her to combat her mother’s will. He only repeated mechanically, “What can I do? What would you have your servant do?”