Slowly, and as a weary man might change his position, the gipsy drew up his figure, and a gleam of moonlight shooting through the network of an arch close by, fell upon the blade of a Manchegan knife which he held with a backward thrust of the arm, slowly raising the point to a level with the heart he wished to reach.
Few strangers are mad enough to go unarmed in Spain. The Englishman was bold as a lion too, but with all this he could not have drawn the pistol from his bosom before that knife had done its work. Still he made the effort, keeping his eyes steadily on the man, and with something of the effect which such looks have upon fierce animals. But the point of that murderous blade rose higher and higher. In another moment it would have been sped; but on the instant a sharp clutch was laid on the assassin’s arm, and the gipsy Sibyl thrust herself between the combatants.
“Back, Chaleco—begone, I say. How dare you step in between me and my right? Think you Papita wants your knife to help her?” cried the fierce old witch, grinding her sharp teeth together at each pause of her speech.
“But the wrong is mine,” answered Chaleco fiercely. “Aurora was my betrothed: let her die—let her die; but he, I will send him before!”
He struggled with the old woman who had clutched the knife with her tawny fingers and clung to him, hissing out her wrath in his face like a wild cat.
“Die! who says Aurora shall die? Is she not mine, the grand-daughter of a count? Who shall condemn her but myself? When I have said she is guilty, then you may talk of wrong—not before. Go home. How dare you follow my grand-daughter when she goes about her work!”
But the gipsy shook her off, wrenching the knife from her clutch with a violence that flung her to the ground.
She started fiercely up. The red turban had fallen from her grey hairs, and they streamed around her like a torn banner that has once been white. Her eyes gleamed and flashed with lurid fire. She flung up her long, flail-like arms, and shrieked forth curses that seemed absolutely to blast the air around like a simoon. She spoke in Rommany, but the curses that came seething from her heart were more horrible to the Englishman, than if he had understood the words. They cowed even the gipsy chief. He gave up his knife abjectly, and casting a fierce, sullen look on the Englishman, slunk away.
This sullen submission appeased the Sibyl’s fury. She followed him into the darkest portion of the cloister, and seemed to drop suddenly down from threats to expostulations, which ended at last in low, wheedling tones, which gradually died away in the melody of the fountain.
The Englishman looked around like one in a dream. Not fifteen minutes had elapsed since he sat in the Sala de los Abencerrages, with the Gitanilla so close to him that he could hear every full throb of her heart. Had she gone forever? That storm of fiendish passion which he had just witnessed, was it real? How still, how deliciously tranquil was the Alhambra! Had that soft moonlight looked but a moment since on the assassin’s knife close to his own heart? It seemed an impossibility. He could not realize the terrible danger which even yet threatened him.