Two Women

Mercedes stood in the shade of the towering hillside, the single beam
of light shining from an uncurtained window alone faintly revealing her
slenderness of figure in its red drapery. No other gleam anywhere
cleft the prevailing darkness of the night, and the only perceptible
sound was that of horses' hoofs dying away in the distance. The girl
was not crying, although one of her hands was held across her eyes, and
her bosom rose and fell tumultuously to labored breathing. She stood
silent, motionless, the strange radiance causing her to appear unreal,
some divinely moulded statue, an artist's dream carven in colored
stone. Suddenly she sprang backward from out that revealing tongue of
light and crouched low at the angle of the house, not unlike some
affrighted wild animal, her head bent forward intently listening.
There was a plainly perceptible movement in the gloom, the sound of an
approaching footstep and of rapid breathing, and finally a shadow
became visible. The watcher leaped to her feet half angrily.

"Ah! so eet vas you, señorita!" she exclaimed, her voice betraying her
emotion,--"you, who come so dis night. Sapristi! vy you follow me
dis vay? By all de saints, I make you tell me dat! You vant him, too?
You vant rob me of all thing?"

The visitor, startled by this sudden challenge, stood before her
trembling from head to foot with the nervous excitement of her journey,
yet her eyes remained darkly resolute.

"You recognize me," she responded quickly, reaching out and touching
the other with one hand, as if to make certain of her actual presence.
"Then for God's sake do not waste time now in quarrelling. I did not
make this trip without a purpose. 'He,' you say? Who is he? Who was
it that rode away from here just now? Not Farnham?"