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Page 125
"Oh, Mr. Knox," said Val Beverley, "Mrs. Camber has something to tell
you which she thinks you ought to know."
"Concerning Colonel Menendez?" I asked, eagerly.
Mrs. Camber nodded her golden head.
"Yes," she replied, but glancing at Val Beverley as if to gather
confidence. "The truth can never hurt Colin. He has nothing to conceal.
May I tell you?"
"I am all anxiety to hear," I assured her.
"Would you rather I went, Mrs. Camber?" asked Val Beverley.
Mrs. Camber reached across and took her hand.
"Please, no," she replied. "Stay here with me. I am afraid it is rather
a long story."
"Never mind," I said. "It will be time well spent if it leads us any
nearer to the truth."
"Yes?" she questioned, watching me anxiously, "you think so? I think
so, too."
She became silent, sitting looking straight before her, the pupils of
her blue eyes widely dilated. Then, at first in a queer, far-away
voice, she began to speak again.
"I must tell you," she commenced "that before--my marriage, my name
was Isabella de Valera."
I started.
"Ysola was my baby way of saying it, and so I came to be called Ysola.
My father was manager of one of Se�or Don Juan's estates, in a small
island near the coast of Cuba. My mother"--she raised her little hands
eloquently--"was half-caste. Do you know? And she and my father--"
She looked pleadingly at Val Beverley.
"I understand," whispered the latter with deep sympathy; "but you don't
think it makes any difference, do you?"
"No?" said Mrs. Camber with a quaint little gesture. "To you, perhaps
not, but there, where I was born, oh! so much. Well, then, my mother
died when I was very little. Ah Tsong was her servant. There are many
Chinese in the West Indies, you see, and I can just remember he carried
me in to see her. Of course I didn't understand. My father quarrelled
bitterly with the priests because they would not bury her in holy
ground. I think he no longer believed afterward. I loved him very much.
He was good to me; and I was a queen in that little island. All the
negroes loved me, because of my mother, I think, who was partly
descended from slaves, as they were. But I had not begun to understand
how hard it was all going to be when my father sent me to a convent in
Cuba.
"I hated to go, but while I was there I learned all about myself. I
knew that I was outcast. It was"--she raised her hand--"not possible
to stay. I was only fifteen when I came home, but all the same I was a
woman. I was no more a child, and happy no longer. After a while,
perhaps, when I forgot what I had suffered at the convent, I became
less miserable. My father did all in his power to make me happy, and I
was glad the work-people loved me. But I was very lonely. Ah Tsong
understood."
Her eyes filled with tears.
"Can you imagine," she asked, "that when my father was away in distant
parts of the island at night, Ah Tsong slept outside my door? Some of
them say, 'Do not trust the Chinese' I say, except my husband and my
father, I have never known another one to trust but Ah Tsong. Now they
have taken him away from me."
Tears glittered on her lashes, but she brushed them aside angrily, and
continued:
"I was still less than twenty, and looked, they told me, only fourteen,
when Se�or Menendez came to inspect his estate. I had never seen him
before. There had been a rising in the island, in the year after I was
born, and he had only just escaped with his life. He was hated. People
called him Devil Menendez. Especially, no woman was safe from him, and
in the old days, when his power had been great, he had used it for
wickedness.
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