The Amaime was sweeping down, swollen by the rains of the night, and I could hear its roar long before I reached its bank. By the moon’s light, which was struggling through the trees on the shore, I could see how high the waters were; but I could not wait. I had come two leagues in an hour, and it was not much farther. I put spurs to my horse; he thrust forward his ears towards the river, snorting loudly, and seemed to be estimating the swiftness of the current; he stepped in, but then, overcome by unconquerable fright, reared backward. I patted his neck and dripping mane, and then pricked him again. He pawed impatiently, and shook his head violently so as to loosen the reins. I let him have his way, fearing that I had missed the ford. He went up the stream about twenty yards, grazing a rock; then he put his nose to the ground, and plunged in. The water came at once up to my knees; in a moment the waves were dashing about my waist. I patted the horse’s neck with one hand, and with the other endeavored to keep him a little up the stream, for, if we should fall below the landing, it would be impossible to ascend the high bank, where uprooted trees were beating in the surges. But the peril was over; the noble animal floundered out, and a moment afterwards resumed his gallop.
A quarter of a league farther on I crossed the waters of the Nima, quiet and crystalline, stretching away into the shadows of the silent forests. On the left I passed the meadow of Santa ⸻; and the house, in the midst of a cottonwood grove, and under a group of palms which lifted up their leaves above the roof, seemed in the moonlight like the bower of an Oriental king, beneath the trees of an oasis. It was two o’clock in the morning when, after passing through the village of P⸺, I got down at the door of the doctor’s house.
XV
In the afternoon of the same day, the doctor took his leave of us, after having left María almost completely recovered, and prescribed a treatment to prevent a repetition of the attack. I felt an unspeakable relief on hearing that there was no danger. As soon as the doctor and my father had gone, the latter to ride with the other for a league, I went to María’s room. She was just finishing braiding her hair, looking into a hand-glass which my sister held for her. She blushed and put it away, saying to me: “This is not work for a sick person, is it? But I’m well again. I am not going to give you another ride so dangerous as the one you had last night.”
“There wasn’t a particle of danger,” I replied.
“Yes, the river, the river! I thought about that, and many other things that might happen to you on my account.”
“A three leagues’ ride! Do you call that …”
“It was a ride in which you might have drowned yourself. The doctor said so; he was so astonished at it that he spoke about it almost before he felt my pulse. When he came back with you he made you wait two hours for the river to fall.”
“The doctor is good for nothing on horseback; and besides, his long-suffering mule is a very different thing from a good horse.”
“The man who lives in the hut by the ford,” said María, “when he recognized your black horse, this morning, was astounded; for he thought the horseman had been drowned, the night before, who dashed into the river despite his warning shouts that it was impassable. Ah, no, no, I do not want to get sick again. Didn’t the doctor tell you that I shall be well now?”
“Yes,” I answered, “and he promised me to come to see you every second day for the next fortnight.”
“Then you surely will not have to take another night ride. What should I have done if …”
“You would have cried for me a great deal, wouldn’t you?” said I, laughing.
She looked at me for a few moments, and then I added, “I could, in any case, die certain that …”
“That what?”
But she guessed the rest from my face.
“Always, always!” she said, almost as if to herself.
“And I have sad things to say to you,” she went on, after a prolonged silence; “things so sad that they were the cause of my sickness. You were on the mountain. … Mamma knows all about it. … I heard papa say to her that my mother had died of a disease whose name I could not catch … that you were destined to a fine career; and that I—oh, I am not certain that it is what I heard, but I think it was that … that I do not deserve that you should … should treat me as you do.”
Tears were upon her pale cheeks; but she hastened to dry them.
“Don’t say that, María, don’t imagine it; no, I beg you not to.”
“But I heard it, and it was after that that I fainted. Why then …”
“Listen, I beseech you. … I. … Won’t you let me forbid you ever to speak of that again?”
She had let her head fall upon her arm, and I was pressing her hand between mine, when I heard the rustling of a dress in the next room; it was Emma coming in.
That night, at suppertime, my sisters and I were in the dining-room waiting for our parents, who were much later than usual. At last we heard them talking in the parlor, as if bringing an important conversation to an end. My father’s noble face proclaimed, by the slight contraction of his lips, and the little perpendicular line in the middle of his forehead, that he had been engaged in a moral struggle which had affected him. My mother was pale, but made no effort
