Dolores and Madalena ran through the open door, breathless.
"Fernando, she is here--the Señora Arteaga, and--"
"Already! Aunt Teresa told us to run and help; she will come also. Don Rafael?"
"More likely to bed," remarked Madalena, skeptically.
"Sh--h!" whispered Dolores, with lifted hand. "The carriage; they are in the plaza!"
She rushed out, and the others followed. Teresa was there greeting Doña Luisa; but all fell suddenly silent as they noticed the gray-white of the old face, and the frail figure as she descended from the carriage with the help of Fernando Mendez and Ana--his cousin's widow.
Fernando cast one glance at the girl who sat her horse and glanced over their heads for the face she did not see.
A wizened old Indian woman alighted from a cart and came to her and touched her foot on the stirrup.
"It is your new land, little mistress," she said, in a tongue not understood by the others, "the land of your handsome lover."
The girl looked again across the many faces gathering in the plaza, and then accepted the help of Don Antonio to alight.
"But he is not here, Polonia--the handsome lover," she returned, and then walked past all the others and slipped her hand under the arm of Doña Luisa.
"A thousand welcomes, señora," said Fernando, at the portal. "The town will rejoice to-day."
"One welcome I had a right to expect at this door," the old lady answered, "and he is not here."
"He will be heart-broken. He did not think you had yet reached San Diego. To-day he was to start for there. Will it please you to have this seat?"
Raquel Estevan gently disengaged her other hand from Dolores, and the frail old woman led her to the little shrine of the Virgin, where the candles glimmered. The others halted at the door, but Fernando and Dolores and Ana knelt also as the old woman and the girl from Mexico clasped hands and bent heads before the statue in the niche.
The old woman rose first and kissed the girl's forehead.
"My daughter," she said, faintly, "I welcome you for my son and for myself, to the land where you are mistress. Now, señor!"
Fernando placed a chair for her, and she sank into it wearily.
"My last journey, my children! You are the son of Manuel Mendez?--we called ourselves cousins once. I present you--all of you--to my daughter--Doña Raquel Estevan."