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It's a ten-mile pull across to Moreno's," said Wing, as the four-mule team came laboring up to the spot and willingly halted, the lantern at the forward axle slowly settling into inertia from its pendulum-like swing. "Where are we, Ned?" hailed a blithe young voice. Sweet and silvery it sounded to the trooper's unaccustomed ears. "Surely not at Moreno's yet?" "Not yet, Paquita mia. Is Ruth awake?
To end the combat Paquita threw between the legs of her lover a cushion which made him fall, and profited by the respite which this advantage gave to her, to push the button of the spring which caused the bell to ring. Promptly the mulatto arrived. In a second Cristemio leaped on De Marsay and held him down with one foot on his chest, his heel turned towards the throat.
It had happened many years ago, when she, Paquita, was a mere child; yet the sisters had never forgiven each other. "And where," I asked, "is this aunt of yours, of whom I have never heard you speak until this minute?"
He wrote the following letter, to which he gave all the appearances of a letter sent from London: "MY DEAR PAQUITA, I shall not try to paint to you in words the passion with which you have inspired me. If, to my happiness, you reciprocate it, understand that I have found a means of corresponding with you. My name is Adolphe de Gouges, and I live at No. 54 Rue de l'Universite.
This girl became a mystery for him; but as he contemplated her with the scientific attention of the blase man, famished for new pleasures, like that Eastern king who asked that a pleasure should be created for him, a horrible thirst with which great souls are seized, Henri recognized in Paquita the richest organization that Nature had ever deigned to compose for love.
Paquita got up gently, her eyes full of tears, took a poniard from one of the two ebony pieces of furniture, and presented it to Henri with a gesture of submission which would have moved a tiger. "Give me a feast such as men give when they love," she said, "and whilst I sleep, slay me, for I know not how to answer thee. Hearken!
"All well with the madam and the kid?" queries Drummond, after the manner of the frontier, when at last Wing folds and replaces his letter, a happy light in his brave blue eyes. "All well; Paquita says that Harvey has captured the entire household, and that Grandpa Harvey is his abject slave. There isn't anything in Chicago too good for that two-year-old.
Besides, can one think of it, Paquita? Can one think of it, my child? The devil take me, now that I know this beautiful girl, this masterpiece of nature, is mine, the adventure has lost its charm." For all his light words, the youth in Henri had reappeared.
"We will shut her up for a day or two, your duenna." "So, we shall have Paquita!" said Laurent, rubbing his hands. "Rascal!" answered Henri, "I shall condemn you to the Concha, if you carry your impudence so far as to speak so of a woman before she has become mine.... Turn your thoughts to dressing me, I am going out." Henri remained for a moment plunged in joyous reflections.
Paquita had more than her share of it, but was made no wiser as to the cause of this feud of long standing; for, though Dona Isidora had evidently been nursing her wrath all those years to keep it warm, she could not, for the life of her, remember how the quarrel originated.
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