ed it.

CHAPTER XXI

WHEN THE WIRES WERE CUT

Don Manuel rode into the moonlit plaza of the Valdes ranch, dismounted,
and flung the reins to the boy that came running. Pesquiera nodded a
careless greeting and passed into the house. He did not ask of anyone
where Valencia was, nor did he send in a card of announcement. A lover's
instinct told him that he would find her in the room that served both as
an office and a library for her, seated perhaps before the leaping
fireglow she loved or playing softly on the piano in the darkness.

The door was open, and he stood a moment on the threshold to get
accustomed to the dim light.

A rich, low-pitched voice came across the room to him.

"It is you, Manuel?"

He stepped swiftly forward to the lounge upon which she was lying and
knelt on one knee beside her, lifting her hand to his lips. "It is I,
_corazon mia_, even Manuel the lucky."

She both smiled and sighed at that. A chord in her responded to the
extravagance of his speech, even though vaguely it did not quite
satisfy. A woman of the warm-blooded south and no plaster saint, she
answered presently with shy, reluctant lips the kisses of her lover. Why
should she not? Had he not won her by meeting the test she had given
him? Was he not a gallant gentleman, of her own race and caste, bound to
her by ties of many sorts, in every way worthy to be the father of her
children? If she had to stifle some faint, indefinable regret, was it
not right that she should? Her bridges were burned behind her. He was
the man of her choice. She listened, eyes a little wistful, while he
poured out ardently the tale of his devotion.

"You do love me, don't you, Manuel?" she demanded, a little fiercely. It
was as if she wanted to drown any doubts she might have of her own
feeling in the certainty of his.

"More than life itself, I do believe," he cried in a low voice.

Her lithe body turned, so that her shining eyes were close to his.

"Dear Manuel, I am glad. You don't know how worried I've been ... still
am. Perhaps if I were a man it would be different, but I don't want my
people to take the life of this stranger. But they mean him
harm--especially since he has come back and intends to punish Pablo and
Sebastian. I want them to let the law take its course. Something tells
me that we shall win in the end. I've talked to them--and talked--but
they say nothing except 'Si, dona.' But with you to help me----"

"They'd better