The Bride of the Sun. Гастон Леру

the same one that was sent to Amelia.”

      “Are you not exaggerating, Agnes? Really, really!... And with stories like these running about, they expect poor historians to be accurate!... I hope you are not taking notes of all this, Mr. Montgomery.”

      “I am exaggerating nothing,” retorted Aunt Agnes obstinately. “It was the real Golden Sun bracelet.... Every ten years since Atahualpa, the last Inca king, was burned alive by Pizarro, the Inca priests have sent it to a Spanish girl they had chosen to be the Bride of the Sun. And every one of them has been walled up alive.... I remember that poor Orellana girl laughing and joking about the Golden Sun bracelet! The whole town knew about it.”

      “The whole town always does have a pretty lively imagination at the time of the Interaymi,” insisted the Marquis. He turned to Mr. Montgomery. “You have no idea, my dear sir, how hard it is for our Society to get away from all these weird legends.”

      “Legends are not things to be despised in research work,” disagreed Uncle Francis. “For my part, I am delighted to have found a country where they are still so living.”

      At this moment a servant came in with a small parcel on a silver tray.

      “A registered package, señorita,” he said. “Will the señorita sign here?”

      Maria-Teresa, having signed, was turning the box over in her fingers.

      “It is from Cajamarca,” she remarked. “Who from, I wonder? I know nobody there. ... Will you excuse me?”

      The young girl cut the string, broke the seals and opened the little wooden box.

      “A bracelet!” she exclaimed, and laughed a little nervously. “What an extraordinary coincidence!... Why, it is the Golden Sun bracelet! It is, really! The bracelet of the Bride of the Sun!”

      Every person in the room had risen, with the exception of the two old ladies, who sat as if stunned. All eyes were turned on the heavy bracelet in darkened old gold, with its sun-adorned center plaque on which the rays seemed blurred out by the dust of centuries.

      “Well, that is funny!” laughed Maria-Teresa.

      “Of course!” exclaimed the Marquis, whose voice had changed a little. “Evidently a joke by Alonso de Cuelar. You refused him, my dear, and he has invented rather a pretty revenge. His little vengeance on the Bride of the Sun.... All the young men of the town call you that because you refuse to marry.... Well, what are we looking so blue about over there? Surely, Agnes, you are not going to make yourself ill over a harmless joke like this?”

      Maria-Teresa was showing the bracelet to Uncle Francis and Dick.

      “Father!” she exclaimed. “I think I shall keep it! Tell Don Alonso I shall wear it as a token of friendship.... It really is a beauty!... What do you think of it, Mr. Montgomery?”

      “It seems to me at least three or four hundred years old.”

      “Pieces like that are still occasionally found in excavations round royal tombs, but they are rare,” said the Marquis. “I am not surprised Don Alonso had to go to Cajamarca for that one.”

      “Where is Cajamarca?” asked Dick.

      “Cajamarca,” said the savant, horrified at his nephew’s ignorance, “is the Caxamarxa of the Incas, their second capital in Pizarro’s day....”

      “And the city where their last king was burned at the stake!” groaned Aunt Agnes.

      They rushed to her side, for she was on the point of fainting and had to be carried to her room. The old duenna followed them, as white as her lace, and crossing herself tremulously.