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“Not so hard a thing,” she said with a sob in her voice; “even a woman, had I one for my friend, could do this thing for me; and yet it is all I have to ask in the world. Just a little pity for my child, Pedro!” She rose to her feet suddenly, and spoke rapidly. “Pedro, they say that I was not truly married; they say my beautiful, golden-haired husband, my angel of light, deceived me. It is false, Pedro! all false! But they say the world will not believe me, and so I must go away; and my child, like an offspring of shame, must be born in secret, and I must submit. It will be taken from me, and I must submit. There is no help! no help!”

She spoke in a kind of frenzy, and her excitement communicated itself to Pedro. He understood, far better than she could, the motives of Doña Isabel; he did not condemn her, neither did he attempt to justify her to her daughter. He only muttered again in his stoical way, “What can I do?”

Herlinda accepted the words as they were meant, as an offer of devotion, of service. “Pedro, you can do much,” she said rapidly. “You can watch over my child. Years hence, when I come to ask it, you can give me news of it. Ah, they think when they take my child from me, it will be as dead to me; but Pedro,” she added in an eager whisper, “I have found what they will do. Never mind how I learned it. They will bring my child here,—here, where only the peasants will ask a few useless questions, where there will be no person of influence to interfere. Yes, it will be brought here, and—forgotten! But Pedro, promise me you will watch for it, you will protect it. Promise! promise! promise!”