Raquel took the little fingers between her own. She put them between her lips and bit them playfully. Her white teeth made tiny indentations in the tender skin. El Rey smiled faintly, a promise, Raquel hoped, of a brighter day of forgetfulness to come.
Silencio stood looking on. He loved to see her so, the child leaning against her knee. Across the water came the sounds of shouts and hurried orders which disturbed no one. Raquel stroked the thin, straight hair over and over. She ran her soft fingers down the angular little face and neck. Tiny tremors of affection ran gently through the child's veins. El Rey laid his head upon the knee to which she drew him. His wasted hand shook as he laid it upon hers.
"You are good," said the child. "You are beautiful, you are kind, kind to El Rey." His tone was patient and old and full of monotony. "But oh! the Señora will pardon me? You are not Roseta."
There was one other person at the wedding of Don Gil and Raquel, besides the padre, who united them, and old Guillermina and Andres.
"Who will give you away?" asked Silencio.
"I myself," said she. Silencio laughed. "That cannot be," he said. As he spoke there was a humble knocking at the door of the salon. Raquel looked up and bounded from her seat.
"Oh, you dear old thing!" she said. She was fondling and kissing the bony creature, who stood aghast before her, who in turn was crying and begging the saints to have mercy upon her.
"And for the good God's sake, tell me how you got here, Señorita, and will the Señor allow me to sit down? My Sunday shoes have killed me, nearly. Is there anything that I could wear instead--" Ana stopped abashed at the sight of so fine a man as Silencio.
"How did the Señor rescue you, my Sweet? Is the Señor Escobeda dead, then?" Ana looked about her as if she expected to see the bodies of Escobeda and his followers over there on the edge of the trocha.
"I have been shipwrecked, Ana," said Raquel, smiling down upon the old woman.
"Ship--the holy saints pres--and you are not even wet--and where, then, is the Señor Escobe--"
"You seem very much worried about the Señor Escobeda, Ana," said Don Gil, who at once made Raquel's friend his own. "Do you not hear him off there now, cursing as usual?"