Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/335

 "Keep it for your last prayer," Cecilia said, repelling her with hand outspread.

"There is a mantilla half made, of the finest"

"It would not make my cheeks round again, Carlota, nor cure my stiff leg. Ask them to cover your face with it when you are dead. I cannot hide you here. You must go."

"I have no more to offer you—I am poor," said Doña Carlota in despair.

"I do not hide people who betray the noble and the kind. You must leave my house this moment, Doña Carlota."

"There is no place under heaven that will hide me from them!" Doña Carlota said, her tongue stiff with terror.

"Go to the one you have wronged deepest," Cecilia counseled, laying her hand with something of tenderness, something of pity, on Doña Carlota's shoulder.

"She drove me from her!" Doña Carlota groaned.

"Go back in penitence, poor fool! The Americans do not fight women; Don Gabriel will not hang you."

Doña Carlota climbed the hill slowly, shame and contrition in her foolish, shallow mind, where fear had flooded but a little while before. Her fat face was drenched with tears, which came as easily to her as sweat on a summer day, when she appeared before Helena's door.