“She knows that. She will never consent to be my wife if this disease reappears. But have you forgotten what the doctor said?”
“Have it as you wish, then.”
“Listen! there’s her voice. Here they come. Don’t let Emma go through this door.”
María entered, still smiling over what she and Emma had been talking about. With light and almost childish step she crossed my mother’s room, and did not perceive the latter until just as she was opening her own door.
“Ah, were you there?” she exclaimed; then coming nearer, she said: “But how pale you are! You have a headache, haven’t you?”
“No, no; I am well. But I was waiting for you, to speak to you alone. It is a serious matter, too, and I am afraid it will pain you.”
María fixed a brilliant gaze upon my mother, and paling slightly, asked her: “What can it be? What is it?
“Sit down here,” said my mother, pointing to a stool at her feet.
She sat down, vainly trying to smile, and her face took on an enchanting expression of gravity.
“I am going to speak to you just as I would to Emma, in a like situation.”
“Yes, Señora, I am listening.”
“Your father has charged me to tell you that Señor M⸺ has asked your hand for his son Carlos.”
“My hand?” she exclaimed, in amazement, involuntarily rising to her feet. But she at once resumed her seat, covering her face with her hands; and I heard her sob.
“What must I tell him, María?”
“He charged you to tell me?” she asked, in broken tones.
“Yes, daughter; and it was his duty to let you know this.”
“But why are you the one to tell me?”
“What would you have me do?”
“Ah, tell him that I cannot … that I am not able … that … no.”
After an instant’s pause, she lifted her head to look at my mother, who could not help weeping with her, and said:
“Do they all know it? Did they all want you to tell me?”
“Yes, they all know it but Emma.”
“Only she! Heavens!” She hid her face on her arms, which were resting on my mother’s knees, and remained in that position several minutes. Then lifting her pale face, bedewed with tears, she said: “very well. You have done your duty. I know it all now …”
“But, María,” tenderly interrupted my mother, “is it, then, such a misfortune that Carlos should wish to be your husband? Is he not …”
“I beg of you … I do not wish … I do not need to know more. So they have let you propose it to me! All, all of them have favored it! Then I say,” she went on, in a voice full of energy, in spite of her sobs—“I say that I will die sooner than consent to this. Ah, this gentleman does not know, does he, that I have the same disease my mother died of, when she was still very young? Alas! what shall I do now without her?”
“And am I not here? Do not I love you with all my soul?”
My mother was not so strong as she thought.
Down my cheeks rolled tears. I felt them as they dropped upon my hands resting on the knob of the door which hid me.
María answered my mother, “But why, then, do you propose this to me?”
“Because it was necessary that this no should be spoken by you, even though I supposed you would speak it.”
“And you are the only one who supposed I would?”
“Perhaps another supposed so, too. If you knew how much sorrow, how many sleepless nights, this thing has caused the one you think most blameworthy …”
“You mean papa?” said María, already less pale.
“No; Efraín.”
María gave a faint cry, and letting her head fall on my mother’s lap, remained motionless. The latter was just opening her lips to call me, when María slowly rose, and said, almost smiling, as she fastened up her hair with trembling hands: “I was wrong to cry so, wasn’t I? I thought …”
“Calm yourself, and dry those tears. I want to see you again as happy as when you came in. You must appreciate the generosity of his conduct …”
“Yes, Señora. He must not see that I have been crying, must he?” She caught up my mother’s handkerchief to wipe her eyes.
“Did not Efraín do right to consent to have me tell you all?”
“Perhaps so—why, of course.”
“But you say that as if—your papa imposed the condition upon him, thought it was necessary that he should leave you entirely free in this matter.”
“The condition? Condition of what?”
“He made him promise never to tell you that we knew and approved the relations between you.”
María’s cheeks became crimson at hearing this; dotted as they still were with tears, they were precisely like those fresh roses moist with dew which she picked for me mornings. Her eyes were fastened to the floor.
“Why did he make him promise that?” said she, finally, in a tone which I could scarcely hear. “Was I to blame? Am I doing wrong, then?”
“No, daughter; but your papa thought that precaution was necessary on account of your disease …”
“Precaution? Am I not well now? Don’t they think I shall not be sick any more? And how could Efraín be the cause of my sickness?”
“It would be impossible, seeing that he loves you so much, perhaps more than you love him.”
“What ought I to do? I will do whatever they wish.”
“Carlos will speak to you today of his hopes.”
“To me?”
“Yes; listen: you will say to him, remaining as calm as possible, of course, that you cannot accept his offer, although it is a great honor to you, because you are very young, letting him understand that your refusal gives you real pain—”
“But this will be when we are all together?”
“Yes,” answered my mother, delighted with the frankness revealed in her voice and glance; “I think I deserve to be treated very kindly by you.”
She made no reply to this. She put her arm about my mother’s
