“Why?” I demanded.

“There is something repellent about it.”

“You are fanciful.”

“I don’t want to do anything that would harm the child.”

“Why, Honey, what’s come over you? What more can happen? Any child who could survive the last months will manage the next few weeks.”

She came with me to the wrought-iron gates; we looked through them to a courtyard which had been made with stones of varying shades of blue which had no doubt given the house its name. There were flowering shrubs of all kinds—brilliant colors among the green foliage.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“It’s gloomy,” insisted Honey.

I pushed open the wrought-iron gate and beckoned Honey. Rather reluctantly she followed me.

There was an air of silent mystery in the courtyard. Windows looked down at us, all with their balconies shut in by wrought iron. They were picturesque and one imagined girls wearing red petticoats and black lace mantillas seated there. Against the wall was a wooden seat with a trellis back. I tiptoed into the courtyard and sat down.

Honey followed me reluctantly. “Has it occurred to you that we might be trespassing?”

I said: “This is part of his estate. I will see all I can of it.”

Honey looked distressed as she did when I talked of him, and I did not wish to talk of him either. By day I wanted to forget those furtive visits.

As we sat there I was aware of a movement at one of the windows and a child stepped onto the balcony. She was like a doll, I thought; she wore black velvet with a white lace frill at her neck and wrists; her long dark hair hung about her shoulders. I guessed her to be about eleven or twelve years old.

She called out something in Spanish which I gathered to be “Who are you?”

I answered in English. “We are at the Hacienda.”

She put her fingers to her lips as though warning me to silence; she said something else and disappeared.

“What a beautiful little girl!” said Honey. “I wonder who she is.”

The girl had come into the courtyard. She was holding a doll in a red satin petticoat and a black mantilla. It was rather like herself.

She held the doll out to us and made it bow; I curtsied and she laughed aloud. There was something arresting about her besides her beauty, for there was a strangeness about her enormous dark eyes.

She held out her hand and took mine. We all sat down together on the seat. Then she noticed that Honey was pregnant, or so it seemed; her face puckered suddenly and she began to cry out: “No. No.” She hid her face in her hands on which several rings sparkled; I noticed gold bracelets on her wrists. Then she turned her back on Honey as though she were determined to forget she was there and when she looked at me she was smiling happily.

She muttered something in which I caught the words bella and muñeca and as I thought she was talking about her doll I replied in stumbling Spanish that the doll was a very beautiful one. She started to rock it as one would a child and I thought then that she looked too old for this kind of play.

Then at the door from which she had emerged a figure appeared.

“Isabella!” said a voice shrill and commanding.

Although I had begun to guess, the shock was none the less great. This was his wife then. This was the girl who had suffered at the hands of Jake Pennlyon.

Isabella rose obediently and went to the woman. She put her arms about her, the doll held by one arm dangling down as she did so. A flood of words came from the woman, scolding and tender, I judged from the tones. Over the girl’s head the woman studied us. Her eyes were sharp, piercing under straggling black brows in which the occasional white hair was visible.

She took the girl’s hand and drew her toward the door, but Isabella suddenly became petulant, crying, “No. No,” and turned to stare at us. She extricated herself from the woman’s arms and came over to stand before us. I was aware then of a scent which was familiar to me; it was the same as that which was in the toilet room and of which the clothes I wore smelled faintly. It was in the bedroom where I suffered my nightly humiliations. I wondered what it was.

The girl spoke to us, but as it was in Spanish I could not understand; then the woman came and took her by the hand and led her firmly away.

She turned to us at the door and spat out a word which I assumed meant “Go away.”

The door shut and we were alone in the courtyard.

“What a strange scene,” I said.

“We deserved all we got. We had no right to be here. I wonder who the girl was.”

“She must be his Isabella,” I said.

“You mean … his wife? But she was a child.”

The door into the courtyard had opened and Richard Rackell stood there.

“Come away,” he said quickly. “You should not have gone there.”

“Is it forbidden?” I asked coldly. I could never forget the part he had played in betraying us.

“There have been no express orders,” he said holding open the door. He went on: “Please.”

As we walked away he went on: “It was a terrible tragedy.”

“Whatever happened,” I said fiercely, “does not excuse what has been done to us, nor those who helped to do it.”

“You have seen the Lady Isabella,” he said. “She is as a child. She became so after the Rampant Lion came here. It affected her mind. She lives like a child with her duenna.”

I said: “She is beautiful.”

“You see a beautiful shell which holds nothing. Her mind is incapable of retaining anything; she has reverted to her childhood. Her interest is in her dolls. It is a great tragedy. You understand.”

I wanted to be alone. I could not get out of my mind the memory of that beautiful face which was devoid of the light of understanding.

The perfume too. I began to understand more. He tried to imagine that I was Isabella. I had to wear her clothes; use her perfume; he wanted to delude himself that the woman to whom he came each night was Isabella.

My attitude toward him had changed. I was sorry for him. I pictured his returning from his expedition expecting to find his beautiful bride waiting for him; the marriage ceremony would have been fixed; he and his lovely highborn Isabella were to be husband and wife. Isabella may have been a child of fifteen, but they married young in Spain; and Felipe Gonzáles was a gentleman; with great courteousness he would have wooed his wife and initiated her into the bedchamber rituals in such a manner as would have been acceptable to her. Instead of which Jake Pennlyon had come with his crude buccaneering ways and he had taken this delicately nurtured creature and crushed her, for crushed she was, poor little bud who had been cruelly deflowered before the blossoms came. And her mind had become unhinged.

I hate you, Jake Pennlyon, I thought; and my feelings against that man were intense while I could only feel pity for Felipe Gonzáles.

Jake Pennlyon! How I wished I had never seen him. He had brought me nothing but disaster. Here I was a prisoner, each night submitted to an intolerable humiliation—because of Jake Pennlyon. My pride was ignored; my body was used to satisfy revenge. I was a substitute for a beautiful young girl whose mind had been destroyed by Jake Pennlyon and my seducer had to imagine that I was this girl in order to make love—if one could use such a word in this connection—to me.

In addition to my humbled pride I was getting anxious about Honey. Her time was near. In the first year of her marriage she had had a miscarriage and I remembered my mother’s saying that the next time she must take the greatest care. In a few weeks now her child would be born; and what would happen if it came before its time? Who would care for her?

I decided to see Felipe Gonzáles. I had seen very little of him really. I wondered whether he avoided me by day. Ours must have been one of the strangest relationships which ever existed.