"
"But he is an infidel; he believes not in the saints," he
muttered; "then how could they avail him!"
Antonia met him at the door. He said an Ave Maria as he
crossed the threshold, and gave her his hand to kiss. She
looked wonderingly in his face, for unless it was a special
visit, he never called so near the Angelus. Still, it is
difficult to throw off a habit of obedience formed in early
youth; and she did not feel as if she could break through the
chill atmosphere of the man and ask: "For what reason have
you come, father?"
A long, shrill shriek from the Senora was the first answer to
the fearful question in her heart. In a few moments she was
at her mother's door. Rachela knelt outside it, telling her
rosary. She stolidly kept her place, and a certain instinct
for a moment prevented Antonia interrupting her. But the
passionate words of her mother, blending with the low,
measured tones of the priest, were something far more
positive.
"Let me pass you, Rachela. What is the matter with my
mother?"
The woman was absorbed in her supplications, and Antonia
opened the door. Isabel followed her. They found themselves
in the the{sic} presence of an angry sorrow that appalled
them. The Senora had torn her lace mantilla into shreds, and
they were scattered over the room as she had flung them from
her hands in her frantic walk about it.
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