The fair-haired girl bent over the older woman and lifted her in her strong arms and carried her into the outer air and found the carriage where it waited for its mistress and placed her in the care of those who served her; then, for the first time, she realized who the lady was who'd found her there beside her dead, as she supposed, for Victorio had no family in San Domingo, having only come there recently, and having held himself as somewhat superior to the most of his own countrymen whom he met, so poor Estrella claimed his body as having been his sweetheart, since he had, as she believed, no wife in all the world, for he had often told her he had never found a woman he could love before he met her. Now, she helped to chafe the hands of her who lay there in that costly carriage with her brown hair making a soft frame for her pale face which lay upon the lap of one who loved her with the kind of love an ignorant, older woman gives to one she much admires and who is far superior to her in every possible way; this woman smoothed the fluffy hair back from the high white brow, now, and spoke to her as if she were her baby instead of one whom she looked up to and respected: "There ... there! My Pretty! Open your sweet eyes and look at your own loving Mage!" she said, as the long, brown lashes that fringed the delicate white lids still brushed the rounded cheeks that were almost as white as the smooth brow. "Look up at me and let me see your shining eyes, again!" "Her heart is beating, now, more regularly," said Estrella, for her hand had sought the other's bosom to see if she still lived at all. "She breathes more easily, too. I think she will recover very soon ... poor Lady! She sympathized with me in my great sorrow so deeply that she fainted. How sweet and dear she is!" she added, softly, as a shudder shook the form before her. "How very sweet and dear she is. You _must_ love her very much indeed.... I never happened to see her before today, but I know who she is, now, and how very kind she has been to so many of our people." "I wish the color would creep back into her cheeks ..." moaned Mage. "Her cheeks are almost always rosy as the dawn ... it seems so strange to see them white ... she don't look natural to me this way ... you should see her when she thinks her husband's coming to the house ... _then_ her cheeks are like a flame of light ... her eyes are just as bright as stars at midnight ... there! They've opening, now ... my Pretty ... my own pretty Dear ... Mage is here ... I'm right here by you Dearie ... there! I'm afraid she's fainted away, again. She seemed to look at you, Estrella, stand farther back so, when she opens her eyes next time, she'll see just me ... she knows old Mage loves her always ... she knows her own old Mage would take good care of her no matter what would come.... Dearie ... I am right here ... old Mage is close beside you...."