He arose and was going toward her, when a little object, scarcely larger than a child of ten years old, and so thin that it seemed but the shadow of something else, passed slowly by him. He would not have believed it human, but for the snake-like glitter of two eyes that gleamed their rage upon him, and gave vitality to the shadow as it passed.
Aurora still clung to the column, waving to and fro as if she must have fallen but for that support. She turned her face to his as he came up, but the pallor that lay upon it, the fear that quivered over limb and feature, had utterly changed her. He would not have known the face again.
“Aurora, what is this? What terrible thing has happened?” he exclaimed, reaching forth his arm to support her. But she shrank away, shuddering, and still clinging to the pillar, she writhed herself behind it, whispering hoarsely,
“It is my grandmother; she has heard us!”
The Englishman was enough affected by this to hasten into the court, and satisfy himself that the person who had passed him was indeed Aurora’s grandmother. He saw her gliding away through the shadowy side of the cloisters, and it seemed to him that muttered wrath and shrill curses were blended with the silvery rush of the fountain.
The sound struck him with strange terror. Still ignorant of the exact danger that might threaten him or the poor Gitanilla, he could not account for the cold thrill that passed through his frame as the curses pierced to his ear through the sweet fall of those waters.
He went back into the Sala de los Abencerrages, and found my mother crouching down by the marble basin, with her wild eyes turned toward the entrance.
“Was it she? Did she speak?” whispered the poor child, rising with difficulty and moving toward him.
The young man was shocked by this wild terror, so disproportioned, as he thought, to the cause. He took both her hands in his and shook them gently, hoping thus to arouse her from the trance of fear that seemed to have benumbed the very life in her veins.
“Sit down by me, Aurora—sit down, child, here in your old place, and tell me what all this means.”