A Daughter of the Dons Part 39

He wondered as he walked away why the talk between d.i.c.k and Miss Valdes had gone so badly. He knew his friend had come jubilantly, prepared to do anything she asked of him. The fear and anxiety that had leaped to her face the instant Gordon had gone showed him that the girl had a deep interest in the young man. She, too, had meant to meet him half way in wiping out the gulf between them. Instead, they had only increased it.

CHAPTER XXI

WHEN THE WIRES WERE CUT

Don Manuel rode into the moonlit plaza of the Valdes ranch, dismounted, and flung the reins to the boy that came running. Pesquiera nodded a careless greeting and pa.s.sed into the house. He did not ask of anyone where Valencia was, nor did he send in a card of announcement. A lover's instinct told him that he would find her in the room that served both as an office and a library for her, seated perhaps before the leaping fireglow she loved or playing softly on the piano in the darkness.

The door was open, and he stood a moment on the threshold to get accustomed to the dim light.

A rich, low-pitched voice came across the room to him.

"It is you, Manuel?"

He stepped swiftly forward to the lounge upon which she was lying and knelt on one knee beside her, lifting her hand to his lips. "It is I, _corazon mia_, even Manuel the lucky."

She both smiled and sighed at that. A chord in her responded to the extravagance of his speech, even though vaguely it did not quite satisfy. A woman of the warm-blooded south and no plaster saint, she answered presently with shy, reluctant lips the kisses of her lover. Why should she not? Had he not won her by meeting the test she had given him? Was he not a gallant gentleman, of her own race and caste, bound to her by ties of many sorts, in every way worthy to be the father of her children? If she had to stifle some faint, indefinable regret, was it not right that she should? Her bridges were burned behind her. He was the man of her choice. She listened, eyes a little wistful, while he poured out ardently the tale of his devotion.

"You do love me, don't you, Manuel?" she demanded, a little fiercely. It was as if she wanted to drown any doubts she might have of her own feeling in the certainty of his.

"More than life itself, I do believe," he cried in a low voice.

Her lithe body turned, so that her shining eyes were close to his.

"Dear Manuel, I am glad. You don't know how worried I've been ... still am. Perhaps if I were a man it would be different, but I don't want my people to take the life of this stranger. But they mean him harm--especially since he has come back and intends to punish Pablo and Sebastian. I want them to let the law take its course. Something tells me that we shall win in the end. I've talked to them--and talked--but they say nothing except 'Si, dona.' But with you to help me----"

"They'd better not touch him again," broke in her lover swiftly.

"It's a great comfort to me, Manuel, that you have blotted out your own quarrel with him. It was magnanimous, what I should expect of you."

He said nothing, but the hand that lay on hers seemed suddenly to stiffen. A kind of fear ran shivering through her. Quickly she rose from the couch.

"Manuel, tell me that I am right, that you don't mean to ... hurt him?"

Her dark eyes searched his unflinchingly. "You don't mean ... you can't mean ... that----?"

"Let us forget the American and remember only that we love, my beloved,"

he pleaded.

"No ... No!" The voice of the girl was sharp and imperative. "I want the truth. Is it that you are still thinking of murdering him, Manuel?"

The sting of her words brought a flush to his cheeks. "I fight fair, Valencia. I set against his life my own, with all the happiness that has come flooding it. Nor is it that I seek the man's life. For me he might live a thousand years--and welcome. But my honor----"

"No, Manuel. No--no--no! I will not have it. If you are betrothed to me your life is mine. You shall not risk it in a barbarous duel."

"Let us change the subject, dear heart."

"Not till I hear you say that you have given up this wicked intention of yours."

He gave up the attempt to evade her and met her fairly as one man does another.

"I can't say that, Valencia, not even for you. This quarrel lies between him and me. I have suffered humiliation and disgrace. Until those are wiped out there must be war between me and the American."

"Since the day I first wore your ring, Manuel, I have asked nothing of you. I ask now that you will forget the slight this man has put upon you ... because I ask it of you with all my heart."

A slight tremor ran through his blood. He felt himself slipping from his place with her.

"I can't, Valencia. You don't know what you ask, how impossible it is for me--a Pesquiera, son of my honored fathers--to grant such a request." He stretched his hands toward her imploringly.

"Yet you say you love me?"

"Heaven knows whether it is not true, my cousin."

"You want me to believe that, even though you refuse the first real request I ever made of you?"

"Anything else in the world that is in my power."

"It is easy to say that, Manuel, when it isn't something else I want.

Give me this American's life. I shall know, then, that you love me."

"You know now," he answered quietly.

"Is love all sighs and vows?" she cried impatiently. "Will it not sacrifice pride and vanity for the object of its devotion?"

"Everything but honor," answered the man steadfastly.

She made a gesture of despair.

"What is this honor you talk so much about? It is neither Christian nor lawful nor right."

"It is a part of me, Valencia."

"Then your ideas are archaic. The duel was for a time when every man had to seek his personal redress. There is law in this twentieth century."

"Not as between man and man in the case of a personal indignity--at least, not for Manuel Pesquiera."

"But it is so needless. We know you are brave; he knows it, too. Surely your vanity----"

He smiled a little sadly.

"I think it is not vanity, but something deeper. None of my ancestors could have tolerated this stigma, nor can their son. My will has nothing to do with it, and my desire still less. It is kismet."

"Then you must know the truth--that if you kill this man I can never----"

"Never what?"

"Never marry you."