men more blasted with fear and shame.”
“Ah!” pursued Josefa as carelessly as she could, for she saw she was now on the right track, “it is easy for a Valencian to assume a look of shame.”
“But, man, these were not men used to shame; these were true men and gentlemen of blood – blood as blue as any blood in Spain.”
“Pshaw! they told you so!” rejoined Josefa with an incredulous shrug, which she knew must bring out the names.
“Why it was no less than Don Leonardo and Don Gaspar Contreras!” broke in the other speaker.
“Don Leonardo and Don Gaspar Contreras!” ejaculated Josefa, this time hardly master of her contending emotions; yet knowing the importance of playing her part to the end, she added in a tone of thundering indignation, —
“And you can stand there and tell me that Don Leonardo and Don Gaspar Contreras came before you bowed with a look of shame, – to beg alms?”
“Even so, fair sir,” rejoined the Murcians; “and if you still have doubts you can go to Valencia, and seek for them; you will not find them there.”
“And pray, sir, why should I not find Don Leonardo and Don Gaspar Contreras in their noble palacio at Valencia?”
“Because they dare not show their faces there,” replied one.
“Because they are at this moment riding for their lives to the sea coast, and you would be more likely to find them at Cartagena,” exclaimed the other at the same moment.
Josefa had now learnt pretty well all she desired to know; nevertheless, to make quite sure of her facts, she sat down again, pushing chairs towards the Murcians, and continued in a more pacific and friendly tone, —
“You must excuse me, gentlemen, if the idea of coupling shame with the name of Contreras came upon me as so strange and unaccountable a conjunction, that I could not bring myself to accept it at first; but I am fain to take it on your honourable testimony. But pray tell me, what can have happened to bring this about? I have a cousin married to a Contreras, and whatever affects the honour of their house affects my own. It must have been some terrible necessity reduced them to this plight.”
“The old story – jealousy working in ill-regulated minds!” answered the elder speaker. “It seems Valencia possesses some monster of beauty, which has turned the hearts of all her cavaliers.”
“Doña Josefa Ramirez y Marmolejo!” interposed the younger Murcian apologetically, as though he thought it a reproach not to have the name of the beauty of the day on the tip of his lips.
“Well, the young lady, it seems, preferred to every one else of Valencia a certain Don Pedro de Valenzuela – ”
Josefa had managed to preserve her composure, in spite of her emotion at hearing her attractions canvassed by the two strangers, but at mention of Don Pedro’s name the blood fairly left her cheeks. To hide her embarrassment, she dropped her glove and stooped to pick it up, till she had summoned the colour back.
“The other gallants,” continued the speaker, not heeding the interruption, “were the more nettled at this, that he was not of so high estate as they – ”
Josefa could hardly refrain from exclaiming that he was better than all of them put together; but she coughed and bit her lip, and by a supreme effort kept the tears out of her eyes.
“And when they found they were slighted, while he was allowed to come and strum night after night at the reja, they grew furious. None were more indignant than the two cousins Leonardo and Gaspar de Contreras. One night, as they were passing casually by Doña Josefa’s house, and saw Don Pedro standing under the window, basking in the smiles of the lady, while they had to wander by as unrecognized outcasts, their blood was up, and without reflection or premeditation, they set upon him there and then, without calling upon him to defend himself, and killed him like a – ”
“But what ails you, fair sir?” ejaculated the speaker, as he observed poor Josefa making vain efforts to look indifferent, and trembling from head to foot.
“Nothing, sir, thank you,” stammered Josefa bravely; “the wind is high to-night. With your permission I will e’en close this window.” The moment’s seclusion from the company, and the gasp of air thus gained, enabled her to appear once more a not too eager listener.
“I can now understand why the Contreras are running away like —dogs,” she replied, not without some little display of feeling, for she burned to bandy back against the assassins the epithet which, though it had not been breathed, had so nearly been applied to her lover.
A very little more talk elicited that the cousins expected to find a ship sailing from Cartagena in three days; in the mean time they were making the best of their way to the coast. Worn out with the long tension of suppressed emotion, Josefa was glad to retire as soon as there was a break in the conversation.
Next morning she purchased a horse, fleet as the wind, and arrived the same night at Cartagena; and here she once more set to work to find out the retreat of the assassins. In this, fortune again favoured her. For having placed her horse in a stable, and hired a room in the principal inn for herself, she sat down beside an open window, while she thought upon the plan to pursue. As she sat here, her attention was arrested by a conversation going on between two men seated under a leafy parral13, which effectually concealed her from their sight.
“Where are you going to-night, so finely arrayed?” inquired one of the voices.
“Where every one is going,” responded the other; “to the house of Don Juan Mancilla, for he gives a right noble banquet in honour of two guests he has staying with him, natives of Valencia. He is to give a representation of a comedy, and many other fine things.”
Doña Josefa held her breath, and leant further out of the window.
“Something I heard of their arrival yesterday morning,” rejoined the first voice. “But why all this haste? Methinks the comedy would have been the better got up for one or two days’ rehearsal.”
“Ah, but you see, the Valencians take ship at half-past twelve this very night,” replied the other; and then in a lower key, “They are even now running from Valencia for some charge of a duel there – ”
“Hold, man, hold!” warily ejaculated the first voice; “who knows who may overhear you?”
Doña Josefa had overheard enough; her work now up to half-past twelve was but to learn the situation of Don Juan Mancilla’s house, and the way thence to the harbour; no difficult task, for Don Juan Mancilla’s was one of the first names in Cartagena; and near the landing-place she met a garrulous servant of the Contreras, who was easily led to speak of his masters’ movements. Between the two points lay an alameda, or promenade, planted with poplars, such as adorns the outskirts of every Spanish town, affording a most convenient spot for the rencontre for which she had now with beating heart to lie in wait.
The tress which on that last sad night she had severed from her lover’s fair young head, and which now alone remained of him who had been all to her, in her hand, she paced backwards and forwards under the pollard poplars, like a knight keeping watch before a sacred shrine. Her thoughts wrapt in the absorbing memories of the past, and the fantastic part fate had assigned to herself, she had taken no note of how the hours had sped by, and when the clocks chimed out the hour of mid-night, it came upon her as a sudden warning. Not many minutes more had elapsed, before she perceived two cavaliers advancing towards her, whom her eye, practised by long acquaintance, readily recognized as the game she had come so far to seek. Their loud talk, swaggering mien, lofty stature, and moreover the clanking of their swords as they walked, reminding that in Valencia the Contreras bore the reputation of the most accomplished fencers of all the country round, might have made a less resolute heart faint even then, and give up the enterprise. But Doña Josefa never flinched. With one foot firmly planted on the path, and resting on the other as a kind of prop, placed in position to support her against any attempt to thrust her aside, she stood firmly and calmly waiting their approach.
“Don