It's my Irish conscience. And you'll
wait until I come back, won't you?"
"Will you be gone--very long?" she asked.
O'Reilly looked deeply now into the dark eyes turned to his, and
found that at last there was no coquetry in them anywhere--nothing
but a lonesome, hungry yearning--and with a glad, incoherent
exclamation he held out his arms. Rosa Varona crept into them;
then with a sigh she upturned her lips to his.
"I'll wait forever," she said.
IV
RETRIBUTION
Although for a long time Dona Isabel had been sure in her own mind
that Pancho Cueto, her administrador, was robbing her, she had
never mustered courage to call him to a reckoning. And there was a
reason for her cowardice. Nevertheless, De Castano's blunt
accusation, coupled with her own urgent needs, served to fix her
resolution, and on the day after the merchant's visit she sent for
the overseer, who at the time was living on one of the
plantations.
Once the message was on its way, Isabel fell into a condition
bordering upon panic, and was half minded to countermand her
order. She spent an evening of suspense, and a miserable night.
This last, however, was nothing unusual with her; she was
accustomed to unpleasant dreams, and she was not surprised when
old familiar shapes came to harass her. Nor, in view of her
somnambulistic vagaries, was she greatly concerned to find, when
she woke in the morning, that her slippers were stained and that
her skirt was bedraggled with dew and filled with burs.
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