He spoke with gentle authority, and without a shadow of the terror that shook every limb of her body. The sound of his clear, bold voice seemed to reassure her. She crept forward with timid hesitation, and allowed him to place her by his side.
“Now tell me, child, what troubles you thus? If that vicious shadow was indeed your grandmother, she has gone away quietly enough, no harm has come of it.”
“You little know,” said the Gitanilla, still keeping her eyes upon the entrance—“you little know our people, or her.”
“But what is there for me to learn? Tell me what this fear means?”
“It means,” answered the poor thing, locking her hands hard and pressing them down upon her trembling knees—“it means that they will poison me.”
“Poison you! this is the madness of fear,” exclaimed the young man, impatiently.
“Or perhaps stone me to death in some dark hollow of the mountains, the whole tribe hunting down one poor creature for her love of the Busne, Chaleco among the first.”
“Aurora, are you mad? Has this miserable little witch crazed you?”
“You will not believe me—you have not seen the poison drao scattered into the wholesome food which an enemy is to eat—or a poor girl strangled in her bed, and buried in some rude pass of the mountains, on the very day when she was to have danced at her own wedding festival.”
“But this is murder!” cried the young man. “The laws of Spain will not permit men to kill their females in cold blood.”