At sight of his wife, pale, mute, and motionless before him, like the statue of desolation, the hacendero felt an unutterable sadness weigh upon his heart; he wished to pass, but Doña Jesuita, making two steps towards him and seizing the bridle of his horse, said with agonized emotion,-- "Don Ramón, what have you done with my son?" The hacendero made no reply; on beholding the grief of his wife, remorse shot a pang into his heart, and he asked himself mentally if he had really the right to act as he had done. Doña Jesuita waited in vain for an answer. Don Ramón looked earnestly at his wife; he was terrified at perceiving the indelible furrows which grief had imprinted upon that countenance, so calm, so placid, but a few hours before. The noble woman was livid; her contracted features had an inexpressible rigidity; her eyes, burnt with fever, were red and dry, two black and deep lines rendered them hollow and haggard; a large stain marbled each of her cheeks, the trace of tears the source of which was dried up; she could weep no more, her voice was hoarse and broken, and her oppressed breast heaved painfully to allow the escape of a panting respiration. After having waited some minutes for a reply to her question, "Don Ramón," she repeated, "what have you done with my son?" The hacendero turned away his head with something like confusion. "Oh! you have killed him!" she said, with a piercing shriek. "No;" Don Ramón replied, terrified at her grief, and for the first time in his life forced to acknowledge the power of the mother who demands an account of her child. "What have you done with him?" she screamed persistently. "Presently, when you are more calm, you shall know all." "I am calm," she replied, "why should you feign a pity you do not feel? My son is dead, and it is you who have killed him!" Don Ramón alighted from his horse. "Jesuita," he said to his wife, taking her hands and looking at her with tenderness, "I swear to you by all that is most sacred in the world, that your son exists; I have not touched a hair of his head." The poor mother remained pensive for a few seconds. "I believe you," she said; then after a pause she added, "What is become of him?" "Well!" he replied, with some hesitation, "since you insist upon knowing all, learn that I have abandoned your son in the desert, but have left him the means to provide for his safety and his wants." Doña Jesuita started, a nervous shudder crept through the whole of her frame. "You have been very clement," she said in a cutting tone, and with bitter irony; "you have been very clement towards a boy of sixteen, Don Ramón; you felt a repugnance to bathe your hands in his blood, and you have preferred leaving that task to the wild beasts and ferocious Indians who alone people those solitudes." "He was guilty!" the hacendero replied, in a low but firm voice.