Daughter of the Dons

He shrugged his shoulders. "How can I guess? That mad American might do anything but show the white feather."

In four sentences she told him.

Manuel clapped his hands in approval. "Bravo! Done like a man. He is at least neither a spy nor a thief."

Valencia smiled with pleasure. Manuel, too, had come out of the test with flying colors. He and Gordon were foes, but he accepted at face value what the latter had done, without any sneers or any sign of jealousy.

"And what shall I do with the letter?" his cousin asked.

"Do with it? Put it in the first fire you see. Shall I lend you a match?"

She shook her head, still with the gleam of a smile on her vivid face. "Too late, Manuel. I have disposed of the dangerous evidence."

"So? Good. You took my advice before I gave it, then."

"Not quite. I couldn't be less generous than our enemy. So I have sent the letter back to him and told him to use it."

The young man gave her his best bow. "Magnificent, but not war. I might have trusted the daughter of Don Alvaro to do a thing so royal. My cousin, I am proud of you."

"What else could I have done and held my self-respect? I had insulted him gratuitously and my people had tried to kill him. The least I could do now was to meet him in a spirit like his own."

"Honors are easy. Let us see what Mr. Gordon will now do."

The sound of a light footfall came to them. A timid voice broke into their conversation.

"May I see Doña Valencia--alone--for just a minute?"

Miss Valdés turned. A girl was standing shyly in the doorway. Her soft brown eyes begged pardon for the intrusion.

"You are Juanita, are you not?" the young woman asked.

"Si, Doña."

Pesquiera eliminated himself by going in to get his mail.

"What is it that I can do for you?" asked Valencia.

The Mexican girl broke into an emotional storm. She caught one of her hands in the brown palm of the other with a little gesture of despair.

"They have gone to kill him. Doña. I know it. Something tells me. He will never come back alive." The feeling she had repressed was finding vent in long, irregular sobs.

Valencia felt as if she were being drowned in icy water. The color washed from her cheeks. She had no need to ask who it was that would never come back alive, but she did.

"Who, child? Whom is it that they have gone to kill?"