eBooks Base 2000

"
"_Bueno_! And when did you have that pretty hope?"
"When I first saw you."
"And that was--two weeks ago."
"A year ago, Juanita. When Francisco visited you at the rancho. I
followed and saw you."
Juanita looked at him a moment, and then suddenly darted at him, caught
him by the lapels of his coat and shook him like a terrier.
"Are you sure that you did not love that Francisco? Speak!" (She shook
him again.) "Swear that you did not follow her!"
"But--I did," said Cranch, laughing and shaking between the clenching
of the little hands.
"Judas Iscariot! Swear you do not love her all this while."
"But, Juanita!"
"Swear!"
Cranch swore. Then to Father Pedro's intense astonishment she drew the
American's face towards her own by the ears and kissed him.
"But you might have loved her, and married a fortune," said Juanita,
after a pause.
"Where would have been my reparation--my duty?" returned Cranch, with a
laugh.
"Reparation enough for her to have had you," said Juanita, with that
rapid disloyalty of one loving woman to another in an emergency.


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