Father Felix had prepared the widow of Victorio Colenzo for the sight she would behold when she went to the rude dwelling where they had laid the form of the prisoner whose dead body had been found lying in the entrance to the prison on the day the people battered down the doors and set at liberty several political prisoners confined therein, but no one could, really, prepare a woman for the vision presented to her eyes when she entered the cottage that had been turned into a temporary morgue, for more than one of those engaged in the deadly strife with the soldiery in the prado after the deliverance of the prisoners had given up his earthly life, either at the time of the attack or afterwards from wounds inflicted either intentionally or inadvertently by those who had been sent to the prado to quell an uprising of the Cuban populace.

As the woman we have before described entered the rude shelter where the dead bodies of several of the residents of the little village lay, she was surprised and grieved by the number of the dead and, also, by the many mourners who crowded among the slabs on which the bodies lay, for there was little of orderly array there, everything being of the rudest and most primitive pattern as the reigning government did not wish to dignify those who had opposed it even after death had taken from their limbs the power to oppose anything in the world of men and women.

The woman, who was of a higher class than most of those assembled there, was treated with marked deference as became her superior position both as to wealth and education, for the widow of Victorio Colenzo occupied a proud place in her own right, having been, for a long time, the occupant of a large and beautiful residence that commanded a wide view of the harbor of Havana and was situated on an elevation above the little village of San Domingo; this home had been hers long before she had ever met the handsome peon whom she had acknowledged as her husband to Father Felix after having learned of his death.

It was through her own instigation that the man had taken the position which had, subsequently, placed him among the prisoners for offenses against the reigning government who had been liberated under her direct orders and with her pronounced sanction, although she had not actually taken part in the work which she had directed.

This woman was of another type entirely as compared with the others in that small dwelling and walked among them almost haughtily in spite of her eagerness in the search after evidence that would convince her that she had not been utterly mistaken in the man she had secretly married, believing him to represent the finest and highest example of patriotic courage and devotion that she had met during the whole of her long residence in the Island of Cuba.

She had come to the Island, in her first youth, as the daughter of the American Consul who represented the United States in the council chambers where were gathered those who discussed affairs of state with the ruling Spanish powers; her father had purchased the beautiful site on which he had built the home that was still hers, although both of her parents had died, there in Cuba, within the past few years; the girl had been left practically without living relatives, and, so, loving her Island home, she had remained there in spite of the solicitations of many American friends who had visited her in Cuba and urged her to return to the United States with them; she was of a reticent and retiring disposition, loving a good book more than almost anything else in the world, and being surrounded by a splendid library, her time was fully and pleasantly occupied, as she had trustworthy retainers who followed her mandates because they loved to fulfill them and pitied her loneliness while they almost worshiped her superior manners and style of speech as well as of living; Father Felix, alone, understood her mental attainments and was greatly bewildered when she told him that she had married Victorio Colenzo as he considered her far removed from the peons who were the regular inhabitants of the Island and among whom he labored as a missionary rather than as an equal, although his deep humility of manner always led them to believe that he was on their own level of intelligence, while the aloofness of this one woman set her apart from all of her neighbors and made her seem to them like a being from another and a higher world.

As she walked among the slabs on which the dead bodies had been laid, that morning, for she had come down from her home early, having slept, during the past night, only the few hours preceding her meeting with Father Felix, as she hoped to have her doubts set at rest and to be assured that the man she had secretly united to herself by marriage was still worthy of her respect and love which she had given to him without further knowledge of his character than what he chose to exhibit to her in their infrequent meetings prior to his declaration of undying worship and deep and overpowering love for herself as well as of patriotic zeal which latter emotion she fully sympathized with, as she regarded it as similar in many ways to her own feeling for her much-beloved land which was all the more powerful because of her isolation from others of her own nation, she representing, to herself at least, the whole of the entire broad expanse of the United States; it was this sympathy with the ardent patriotism of Victorio Colenzo that had led to her present plight for, believing him to possess the strong feelings for his native land which he had professed to her to have, she had urged his participation in the plot which, on its discovery by the Spanish authorities, had plunged him, with others, into the prison from which, through her own earnest efforts, they had just been liberated, or, at least, a part of them.

Now, she reached the side of the farthest slab in that small room, and noticed, at once, crouching down beside it, a fair-haired girl who seemed, beyond all doubt, the one bereft by the condition of the body lying there, so straight and still, beneath the rude pall that had been thrown over it so that even its face was hidden from sight. She softly touched the mourner on the shoulder nearest to her and whispered:

"My poor Girl, for whom do you mourn? Is it the body of your brother lying here, or, yet," she went on, hesitatingly, for a horrible suspicion began to thrust its ugly head before her vision, "can he who lies here so quietly have been, maybe, your husband? You are young but I know well that the girls, here, marry very young...."

She ended haltingly, for the girl had raised her lovely face, tear-stained and drawn by sorrow, and looked up into the face that bent so near to her own:

"He was my plighted husband, Lady; he would have been my husband had death not intervened to take him from me! I love him so ..." she suddenly screamed in agony, "I love him so ... Victorio! Why have you left me all alone in a cruel world to be a widow before I was a wife? Victorio...."

And, then, she rose, as one who had that right, and turned the pall back from the countenance of him who lay there on that senseless slab.

The other woman did not scream, as poor Estrella had ... she did not even move, indeed, but stood as if she had been carved from marble, for her face was almost just as pale as death itself ... the pulsing blood receded from her cheeks and from her trembling lips ... she stood so tall and still that the poor girl became conscious of her in spite of her own grief and wondered if she, also, sought to find some one she loved among the dead; with that thought in her mind, she stepped back from the corpse she had been leaning over, and said to her who stood there silently as if her interest in the affairs of life had, suddenly, ceased:

"I beg your pardon for my selfishness. Are you, too, one of those who lost some loved one yesterday? Do you seek, here, in this sad place, the body of one whom you've loved as I have loved the man who lies here ... dead ... before me?"

The older girl was silent, for she could not talk to poor Estrella as she wished to do ... as she had meant to do in case her worst fears had to be realized; she did not wish to add a single hair's weight to the sorrow that the poor girl felt for him who had been false to both of those trusting women who stood there beside his corpse; she did not wish to harm the innocent girl, for she could see how true and loving she had been by gazing, only for a moment, in her wide, blue eyes, and, yet, it was her right and, perhaps, it was also her duty, to the man who had been her earthly husband, to claim his body and to bury it as would become the husband of a woman such as she had, always, been; but, as he'd always begged her to keep secret their marriage which had taken place in Havana instead of having Father Felix marry them at his request, for political reasons, he had told her, with the thought that she, being an American, might complicate his position with the Spanish government, as he had occupied a place of trust under the Governor, until the proper time would come to expose his actual feelings for his native land.

And, so, she had to think of this side of the complicated problem presented to her by her strange position while she stood there with that weeping, loving, sympathetic, untaught girl clinging to her hand and questioning her. At length, having collected a little of her usual unselfish consideration for the people living on the Island, she turned to poor Estrella and said to her, softly, and, yet, without condescension in her manner:

"Yes, my poor Girl, I, also, seek someone I love among the newly dead.... I, also, wish to find the man I loved as you have loved the man who lies here on this slab.... I, also...."

Then, her courage failed her utterly and she fainted dead away, even as poor Estrella, herself, had, when she had first beheld the body of the man who had made love to both of them.

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...."

At that, the woman lying there within her faithful arms, stirred softly, and, once again, her glorious gray eyes opened, and she looked at poor old Mage whose face was all distraught with many wrinkles and with deep anxiety for her. Then she raised herself to a sitting posture and put her hands before her eyes as if to hide some horrible spectre from her sight, and, then, she looked at poor Estrella standing there not knowing what to do, for Mage would not allow her, even now, to come a single step nearer to her mistress, and then she spoke:

"My poor Girl," she said, "My poor Girl, I too, sought to find the man I loved, but his body is not here. I pity you with all my heart and wish that I could help you bear your sorrow. Come to me and I will try to help you ... come this evening, just at sunset, to my house. I think you know which one it is.... Mage, you tell her where to come."

For she had reached the limit of her endurance, for the moment, and old Mage, seeing her evident distress, hurriedly told Estrella where to come to find her mistress, and gave the orders to the coachman to drive home at once.

And, then, Estrella went again into the habitation of the dead and the other woman, with her heart like lead within her breast, went back to her own place and left the body of the man she'd called her husband for a few short months lying there upon that senseless slab with the weeping girl beside it.