"Teresa!" Inez began reprovingly; but the old domestic tyrant would have out her say.
"I heard this very morning that Donna Maria boasts that she possesses a silver reliquary holding a lock of the blessed Santa Veronica's hair" (here Teresa crossed herself devoutly), "a reliquary once belonging to Philip the Second, our most Catholic king,—the saints have his soul in their keeping!"
Inez moved from the table; the flush on her cheek had deepened to crimson. The duenna presumed to lay her hand on her young lady's arm to detain her.
"You know, señorita, that there is not a lock of that saint's hair to be found in all Spain, from Navarre to Andalusia, save that one which King Philip himself gave to your noble ancestor, Señor Don Amadeo de Aguilera."
Inez tried to release her arm, but the pressure of the old woman's hand had tightened into a gripe as she continued, after a pause: "You would not have me imagine that a descendant of that illustrious caballero, that a daughter of the house of Aguilera, has sold the priceless relic for twenty dollars?" The question could not have been asked with more pious horror, had it regarded the tombs containing the bones of all the maiden's noble ancestors.
Inez, in her position of helpless poverty, could not throw off that most intolerable yoke, the tyranny of an ill-tempered old duenna, who knew herself to be indispensable, because her place could not be supplied by another. Teresa considered that years of almost unpaid service had given her the privilege of being as insolent as she pleased to her gentle young mistress. On the present occasion Teresa used—or abused—that privilege to the utmost.
"I would not have exchanged that precious relic," she cried, "for the Golden Rose which his Holiness the Pope has sent to our queen! I'd have begged—starved—thrown myself into the river—before I'd have sold it for money! The glory of the house of De Aguilera is gone for ever! The curse of the saints is upon us!" And Teresa, relaxing her hold on Inez, burst into a flood of passionate tears.
Inez was not herself sufficiently free from a superstitious regard for relics, not to be distressed and even somewhat alarmed at seeing the light in which her act was viewed by the old duenna.
"We were in debt—in need," she said softly; "I hope that the blessed saint herself would forgive what I did for the sake of a brother."
"The saint may—but I cannot!" exclaimed Teresa, hastily drying her eyes, and then bursting out of the kitchen. Her anger, if the truth must be told, sprang quite as much from her pride as from her devotion. To have it noised about in the market-place of Seville that the reliquary of King Philip, the heirloom of the Aguileras, had actually been sold to purchase food,—this was even worse to the old retainer of the family than the fear of offending Santa Veronica.