Page:Gaston Leroux--The bride of the sun.djvu/49

Rh "There we are! ... the old story! I expected it!" exclaimed the Marquis.

"You might speak seriously! You knew Amelia de Vargas...."

"A charming girl ... the sweetest smile in the city! ... That was twenty years ago... . How time flies!... Yes, she disappeared ... with a poor cousin."

"I heard the other day that it was a toreador," interjected Maria-Teresa. "They revive that old story every ten years, at the time of the Interaymi."

"She disappeared outside the bull-ring," explained Aunt Agnes. "There was a fight in the crowd, and she was separated from her parents. Nobody ever saw her again. Afterwards, some people remembered catching sight of her surrounded by a group of Indians. She died at their hands, walled up alive."

"What a gorgeous imagination crowds have! But the fact remains that that poor cousin of hers disappeared about the same time."

"So you are pleased to say, Christobal. But what of Maria Cristina de Orellana?"

"Oh, that was another matter ... a very sad case. She was out for a walk with her father round the Cuzco, and went into one of the caves, never to reappear. She lost her way in the old subterranean passages, of course. The