Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/126

 such complete abandonment, that the magistrate stood stiffly, his limbs checked in their function by his great amazement.

"This is not well," he said sternly.

"False!" Helena repeated in scorn. "Who is it that has mooned and sighed under windows, and caught flowers thrown by coquettes—and worse? What have I heard from the capital of the doings of Don Roberto that would turn my heart to him or make him dear? Roberto, if there ever was any obligation to you on my part, I have been absolved from it long ago."

"You were betrothed ta me—it was a holy compact," Roberto said.

His voice shook with sickness of the shame he believed had been put upon him; he stood clenching his hands and scowling, ready, it seemed, to begin the chastisement that he had threatened.

"This is folly," Don Abrahan said, attempting to soothe their young passion with the unction of his steady word. "All the world knows there was a betrothal between you two, years ago."

"It wasn't of my making," Helena reminded him, bitterly accusing in the recollection of that bargain and conveyance, after the country's custom, "What you and my father arranged between you when I was a child cannot bind me now, Don Abrahan. I repudiate it; I throw it in your face!"

"It cannot be done so lightly," Don Abrahan said, thinking of the lands and herds, and the gold that the Yankee captain had plucked out of the air