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As we rode up to the door it opened, and I saw at once that Rube were right, for a dark-eyed Mexican girl came out and looked at us inquiringly. "'What can I do for you, senors? she asked. "'Don't you remember me, Donna Pepita? Rube said, laughing, as he lifted the sombrero which had shaded his face. "The girl started violently. 'Ah, Signor Americano, is it you?
As he approached the group he looked only at Pepita. But Pepita looked only at José, her eyes laughing. "Jovita is cross," she said; "she has been asking for you. She wishes to go home." Sebastiano's eyes were fastened upon her face, upon her red lips, as she spoke.
"Pepita!" he repeated; it was strangely like the accent of a lover, but he no longer cared. Still the singer's voice was silent. Then he ran swiftly beside the wall, as he had seen her run, until he came to the fissure. It was overgrown with vines and brambles almost as impenetrable as an abatis, but if she had pierced it in her delicate crape dress, so could he!
He asked it as a friend there was no unkind-ness he is my friend, yes, though he is Sebastiano and I am only a poor fellow who works hard. It will all be as well as ever between us when it is all done with and we meet again. If you had wanted him we should have been brothers." Pepita sat still. What strange thing had happened to her? She did not know. Something was the matter with her breathing.
It would not be hard to persuade her. This Pepita had a predilection for anything that was unusual; she was rather romantic. He would explain to her who the great artist was, enhancing the honor of acting as his model. "Don't stint on the money," said the master anxiously. "All that she wants. Don't be afraid to be generous."
The result was the same for the two sovereigns; though the intellectual monarch was crushed by his inward force, the other by his weakness. What could Pepita do, singly, against this species of scientific nostalgia? After employing every means that family life afforded her, she called society to the rescue, and gave two "cafes" every week. Cafes at Douai took the place of teas.
When the children had gone to bed, and the silence and solitude oppressed her, Pepita would say, "My friend, are you ill?" and Balthazar would make no answer; or if he answered, he would come to himself with a quiver, like a man snatched suddenly from sleep, and utter a "No" so harsh and grating that it fell like a stone on the palpitating heart of his wife.
I'd been grinding on obscurely for a good many years, without gold or glory, and the first thing of mine that had made a noise was my picture of Pepita, exhibited the year before. There'd been a lot of talk about that, orders were beginning to come in, and I wanted to follow it up with a rousing big thing at the next Salon.
And so it happened that he forgot not only his honor, but his obligations to Pepita, and destroying the record of their marriage which he managed to secure with the assistance of a confederate, he turned a deaf ear to her pleadings and went his way. What had he, Don Felipe Ramirez, who lived and ruled like a prince on his vast estates, to fear from a pretty little half-caste Indian girl?
If his second wife had died mysteriously, North Aston was generous enough not to suppose that he had poisoned her; and who could wonder at that dreadful Pepita having a stroke, sitting in the sun as she did on such a hot day, and so fat as she was? So that Mr.
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