Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/298

 “Yes?” she questioned, watching me anxiously, “you think so? I think so, too.”

She became silent, sitting looking straight before her, the pupils of her blue eyes widely dilated. Then, at first in a queer, far-away voice, she began to speak again.

“I must tell you,” she commenced “that before—my marriage, my name was Isabella de Valera.”

I started.

“Ysola was my baby way of saying it, and so I came to be called Ysola. My father was manager of one of Señor Don Juan’s estates, in a small island near the coast of Cuba. My mother”—she raised her little hands eloquently—“was half-caste. Do you know? And she and my father”

She looked pleadingly at Val Beverley.

“I understand,” whispered the latter with deep sympathy; “but you don’t think it makes any difference, do you?”

“No?” said Mrs. Camber with a quaint little gesture. “To you, perhaps not, but there, where I was born, oh! so much. Well, then, my mother died when I was very little. Ah Tsong was her servant. There are many Chinese in the West Indies, you see, and I can just remember he carried me in to see her. Of course I didn’t understand. My father quarrelled bitterly with the priests because they would not bury her in holy ground. I think he no longer believed afterward. I loved him very much. He was good to me; and I was a queen in that little island. All the negroes loved me, because of my mother, I think, who was partly descended from slaves, as they were. But I had not begun to understand how hard it was all going to be when my father sent me to a convent in Cuba.