“Awake!” she said, reeling on her feet, as if intoxicated. “It is over—Papita has kept her oath—the work is done. Get up, last of my race, and see how a woman of Egypt can die.”
The terrible light of her eyes fired me with strength. I stood up, and asked what she had done—why she talked of dying.
“I have left the bride stiff and stark on her silken couch up yonder. A drop of this—only one drop—in the water which sparkled on her toilet was enough. I stood by her bed when the bridegroom came—she was smiling on her pillow. The drao that I distill, always leaves smiles behind it. He saw me, old Papita, whose blood he has shamed, whose wrath he has braved, and while he stood frozen into a statue, I glided away, away, away forever! forever more.”
She crooned over these last words in a low mutter, and sunk slowly down to the earth.
Chaleco bent over her.
“Mother Papita,” he said, “how is this? you have not drank of the drao!”
The old woman gave a cough that rattled in her throat.
“There was no need, my count. Did you think the old frame would not give out when its work was done? I knew it—I knew it. Come hither child, and take ‘the gipsy’s legacy,’ hate, hate, hate to the Busne, the enemies of our people.”
She struggled to a sitting posture, and tore the great ruby rings from her ears.
“Your dagger, Chaleco. Quick, quick,” she said.