She looked at Rachela.
The woman had fallen into the dead sleep of exhaustion, and
she would not have to parry her objections and warnings.
Unshod, and in her night-dress, she slipped through the
corridor to the back of the house, and tightly clasping her
rosary in her hands, she stood behind the lattice and watched
her boy away.
He turned in his saddle just before he passed the gate, and
she saw his young face lifted with an unconscious, anxious
love, to the very lattice at which she stood: In the dim
light it had a strange pallor. The misty air blurred and made
all indistinct. It was like seeing her Jack in some woful
dream. If he had been dead, such a vision of him might have
come to her from the shadow land.
Usually her grief was noisy and imperative of sympathy. But
this morning she could not cry nor lament. She went softly
back to her room and sat down, with her crucifix before her
aching eyes. Yet she could not say her usual prayers. She
could not remember anything but Jack's entreaty--"Kiss me, mi
madre! Bless me, mi madre!" She could not see anything but
that last rapid turn in the saddle, and that piteous young
face, showing so weird and dreamlike through the gray mist of
the early dawn.
Antonia had watched with her. Dare, also, had turned, but
there had been something about Dare's attitude far more cheery
and hopeful.
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