"From your appearance, I should judge that you wish me to accept him for you."
"Oh, uncle!" Again the girl drew short, quick breaths. She gazed eagerly into Escobeda's face. "Can you think anything else? Now I need not go away. Now I need not be longer a burden upon you. Now I shall have a home! Now--I--shall--be--" The girl hesitated and dropped her voice, and then it died away in a whisper. But one meaning could be drawn from Escobeda's cunning screwed-up eyes, his look of triumph, his smile of wickedness.
They stood gazing at each other thus for the space of a few seconds, those seconds so fraught with dread on the one side, with malice and triumphant delight on the other.
"Your mother hated me, Raquel. Perhaps she never had the kindness to tell you that. I found her when she was dying. You remember, perhaps, when she asked you, her little girl, to withdraw for a while, that she might speak with me alone?"
"I remember, uncle," said Raquel, panting.
"It was not to be wondered at that she preferred your father to me. She had loved me first. She was my father's ward. But when he came, with his handsome face and girlish ways, she threw me aside like a battered doll. She said that I was cruel, but she never discovered that until she fell in love with your father. She ran away with him one night when I was at the city on business for my father. The doting old man could not keep a watch upon them, but I followed their fortunes. She never knew that it was I who had him followed to the mines, where he thought he had discovered a fortune, and killed him in the cold and dark--"
"His bones, you can see them now, Raquel; they were never buried--they lie up there on the floor of the old--"
The dagger slipped from Raquel's fingers, and she slid to the floor.
"No, I did not tell her that I should take out my vengeance upon her child. I knew my time would come. Silencio's offer is of as much value as if written in the sand down there by the river, the--"
Ana came in at the doorway. Escobeda stooped and picked up the dagger. "She will hardly need this," he said, as he stuck it in his belt.
When Raquel opened her eyes Ana was bending over her, as usual in floods of tears, drenching the girl alternately with warm water from her tender eyes and cold water from the perron.