"Raquelita, how little you know men! Pretty Marta by the river is only a servant; but our men go mad for these white women of blue eyes--mad!"
"A few days more, and that will be forgotten as he would forget the brown girls. Have patience. At least, she will not mock our religion to him; and the rest--it is only one day and two nights more, Anita, and you will help me."
"At least you will find a way to keep those pearls from her," insisted Ana, stubbornly. "How could you offer them to her? Oh, I could have screamed at you!"
"The pearls are but a trifle to let go for a night, dear. Help me with the candles to the altar-place. Oh, yes, she may have the pearls."
Porque tu eres mi vida, Tu eres mia mada, Tu eres mi Dios!
Angela Bryton sought until she found Rafael asleep in a corner of the travellers' room.
"Ana Mendez knows; she has told your wife," she said, abruptly. "Two nights and a day we have; that is all. Raquel says I am not more to you than a brown girl in the willows. You make her pay for that!"
"Pay?" He rubbed the sleep of the brandy from his eyes and sat up, then caught her to him in the instinct of possession.
"Not yet," she said, with the glint of steel in her eyes. "Not until you make her pride pay, Rafael mio! She tosses a string of pearls to me as a queen would to a waiting-maid, to show how trifling a thing it is to her. One string! Rafael, where now is that boat?"
"The boat?" He stumbled to his feet and stared at her.
"The boat! You said it. Not even my hand shall you touch until it is in the harbor. Cousin Eduardo and Keith Bryton will send me away when she tells them; they will never let you see me again."
"Huh!" He flung back his head contemptuously. He had never quite gotten away from Teresa's conviction that Keith Bryton's impatience with Angela was born of jealousy. So it was Keith Bryton again!
"He gets you when he has killed me, not sooner," he muttered. "And they all know, eh? How is that?"
"Perhaps not, but they will. It is that Mendez woman and your wife! I will _not_ be sent like a pauper back to England! Cousin Edward spoke yesterday of that; of an allowance for Dolly and me. Now I know what it means! If I go, I will go in a manner they don't dream of,--alone in that boat! You can join me anywhere you say, on the coast. How you stare! It is not so difficult, and there will never, never, never be any other way we can be together."