Ruth was hurrying to report the circumstances to the head surgeon and to arrange to have searching parties sent out to bring back her pseudo patient, when, passing the cot where old Mage was still stationed, she noted that it was empty; stopping to inquire the reason for this change, her old nurse hurriedly related the facts concerning the exodus of the young man, while she secretly rejoiced at the success of her strategem, for so she chose to denominate the method she had taken of protecting her dear young lady from the nearness of the man she had married through mistaken confidence. Estrella, having been sent to consult with her friend concerning some matter connected with the welfare of the temporary hospital, came along, just then, and was told what had happened. "Why," she exclaimed, "where has poor Manuello gone? He is not fit to be outside alone. I am afraid I was a coward to leave him when he needed care. Poor little Tessa would have stayed right with him no matter what he said or did. I have not seen her," she mused, "for a long time, now ... not since a number of days before we came away from home.... I wonder where she is." Could Estrella have seen her little friend at that moment, she would have lost all pity for Manuello and added to that she already had for poor Tessa, for she was then suffering from the last encounter she had had with the man who had just fled out into the night; although the little peasant would have been proud to have been made the wife of the man whom she madly loved, yet she resisted the idea of being merely his mistress for Father Felix had forcibly impressed upon the minds of the girls of his flock the virtue of chastity; the consequence of this resistance had been a blow received by herself which had rendered her helpless for the time being, as it had made it impossible for her to walk for any distance, and a slash across one of Manuello's dusky cheeks which she had made with a knife she had happened to have in her hand at the time of his attack. The heart-sick girl was lying on the rude bed she had made for the man who had left her without aid, in the deserted hut into which Estrella had once peered, while her friend, so far away from her, was bemoaning the fate of her ungrateful former lover.