"Excellencia," she muttered, "it is true; I did sin. But the padre gave me the word. He said your soul was lost; that the man had bewitched you as--as your little mother had been bewitched when she--when she left religion for your father, and in the end they both died--and so soon!--and--and I wanted you to live, Excellencia! and I wanted your soul to live; and--so it was I took the word of the padre to you, and told you he was dead--and wished that he was dead--but it was all no use at all! On his hand when the fever burned was your ring--it kept him alive and he could not die, and all day and all night he said, 'Dona Espiritu! Dona Espiritu!' The padre heard, and I heard. The American brother, he heard too, and asked the Indios who was Dona Espiritu, and where did she live, that he might send for her. But it was no use. The padre made them all afraid for your soul, so that I told you the lie. Now it is all said, and my life is going out of my body at the curse of your anger." In fact, the fear in the old creature had worked on her own nerves, so that her final words were very faint. She spoke as one half swooning, and put out her hand in pitiful plea for help. "Ah--the good padre," said the girl, bitterly. "Well, you see how it has all ended. The padre died, and has gone to God to answer for the lie; and the man he wished dead is alive--alive--alive, and oh--Mother of God! is happy with--with--" Her cold self-control melted in a flood of tears, and she flung herself face down on the pallet beside the frightened Indian woman, her form shaken with shuddering sobs of absolute despair. The dawn was near. All the night she had walked in her room alone, stunned and wordless over this thing she could not fight, or reason, or pray away; and now, having heard it all,--even of his calls for her when unconscious,--she had let fall for the first time the cold mask she had worn since the death of Dona Luisa, and since the significance of her vow had been revealed to her by the days and nights of Rafael's life. She wept in a wild abandonment of grief at the hopeless vista of years reaching on to the edge of the world where death is. It had all been dreary enough before; but now-- When the birds began their welcome of the day she was still lying prone, but silent. The tempest of feeling had passed, and her Indian woman stroked her hair softly, and waited, and did not speak. At last she rose, and looked out on the yellowing light touching the purple of the mountains. "This is only a dream of the night, Polonia," she said, with a great sigh; "sleep again, and forget it all." But the old woman clung with trembling hands to the folds of the girl's gown, and rested her cheek on the silken slippers. "And the curse, darling? what of the curse of the lie?"