Under cover of night I went on
board their ship; I told them my story, and asked them to take me on
shore with them disguised as one of themselves. With some difficulty
they consented, and I was thus enabled next day to be in Montevideo
and with my long-lost Transita. I found her lying on her bed, emaciated
and white as death, in the last stage of some fatal pulmonary complaint.
On the bed with her was a child between two and three years old,
exceedingly beautiful like her mother, for one glance was sufficient
to tell me it was Transita's child. Overcome with grief at finding her
in this pitiful condition, I could only kneel at her side, pouring out
the last tender tears that have fallen from these eyes. We Orientals
are not tearless men, and I have wept since then, but only with rage
and hatred. My last tears of tenderness were shed over unhappy, dying
Transita.
"Briefly she told me her story. No letter from me had ever reached
Basilio; it was supposed that I had fallen in battle, or that my heart
had changed. When her mother lay dying in Montevideo she was visited
by a wealthy Argentine lady named Romero, who had heard of Transita's
singular beauty, and wished to see her merely out of curiosity. She
was so charmed with the girl that she offered to take her and bring
her up as her own daughter. To this the mother, who was reduced to the
greatest poverty and was dying, consented gladly.
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