Broken up, as it were, by those naked old towers, the light fell among the groves, throwing the trees out in masses that took a greenish hue almost as if it had been day; then the foliage became dense, and long shadows cast themselves like a dewy vapor down the hill, admitting soft gleams to flicker in here and there, like a network of pearls embroidering the darkness. Then, as if some undercurrent of light had been all the while flowing on beneath the trees, out rushed the moonbeams breaking away from the shadows, and pouring down upon the bosom of the Darro, smiling, sparkling, kindling up every drop of water as it flowed by, till you would have thought some hidden vein in the mountains had broken free, and a torrent of diamonds were sweeping between Granada and its Moorish fortress.
It is possible that the old gipsy saw nothing of this. I am inclined to think that she did not, for the scene had become familiar to her, and that night she was ill at ease. Instead of turning her gaze as you would have done upon the Alhambra and the snow ridges beyond, she threw her head back, and began peering among the stars, muttering to herself in some strange tongue, and holding up her mystic ring as if to catch direct fire from the particular star to which her eyes were uplifted.
“Not now,” she said fiercely; for the least untoward thing awoke the old woman’s wrath; and even then she longed to gather all that beautiful moonlight up, and cast it into some dark void, because its refulgence dimmed the stars which she wished to read. “Not now,” she muttered, locking her sharp teeth together, and turning her fierce eyes upon the sky with a gleam of hate—“not while the moon is wading through the snows up yonder, and putting out the bright, beautiful stars till the heavens all run together like the printed pages of a book which one has not the art to read. Not yet, not yet. I must wait till the skies are purple again, and the stars come out with fire in them. The moon, the moon, it is the friend of the Busne, never of the Gitana. Accursed be its path in the sky. May the stars, that have a language for the Egyptian, grow powerful, and smite it down from its high place.”
After uttering this weird curse, the Sibyl closed the door and slunk back into her cave, pacing to and fro, and crooning over a wild snatch of song that seemed to excite rather than soothe the fierce mood she was in.
CHAPTER III.
CHALECO AND HIS PLUNDER.
All at once the old woman drew in her breath with a hiss, and bent her eyes on the door. She heard a footstep approach. The wooden lock moved, and a man perhaps of twenty-three or four years old presented himself.
It was many years since the old Sibyl had been known to change countenance, or the unpleasant surprise that seized her at the sight of this man must have been visible. Yet of all his tribe he might have been deemed a welcome guest in any cave in the settlement, for he was a count or chief among the gipsies of Granada, and added to this, was the betrothed husband of Aurora, the grandchild of Papita.
Why then should the old woman shrink within herself and receive Chaleco, the chief of her tribe, with so much inward trepidation? I only know that, dazzled as her eyes had been by the moonlight, she had read enough in the stars to make her afraid of meeting Chaleco.
The young count had all those strongly marked characteristics that distinguish his race: a clear olive complexion; heavy voluptuous lips, revealing teeth that shamed the whitest ivory; hair black and coarse, but, in his case, with a purple lustre upon it; eyes of vivid blackness, and cheek bones slightly; in him, very slightly prominent, all lighted up by an expression of great strength, sharpness, cunning and perseverance—that is, these passions must have been visible in his countenance had he ever allowed one true feeling to speak in his face. His dress alone would have bespoken his position in the tribe to one accustomed to the habits of our people, still it did not entirely appertain to the portion of the country to which he belonged.
Chaleco had travelled much in Catalonia, and having a rich fancy in costume, adopted many of their picturesque habits of dress. On this evening, he seemed to have arrayed himself with peculiar care, which is easily accounted for when we remember that he had been more than six weeks absent from Granada, and in that time had not seen his betrothed.