"I wonder," said Mrs. Carleton, "how that poor woman, Louisita, exists? for I think from what I saw the day we went to her, that she is all alone, and if you recollect, she said something to that effect. I fear she suffers in this cold weather. You saw, of course, that it was no kind of a house that she came out of."
"Yes," replied Miss Vyvyan, "it appeared to be only a mound of earth."
"I want to take her some food," continued Mrs. Carleton. "Do you think we can get there through the snow?"
"I can carry Cora," replied Miss Vyvyan, "if you can take the food."
Mrs. Carleton filled a box with both food and fruit, and the ladies, with little Cora, went forth to visit Louisita.
She met them in the same manner as before, not allowing them to come very near to the opening, and brandishing the old sword.
"If that child were one of the accursed sex," she said, with a malicious look, "I would sever its head from its body."
The child could not, of course, understand her language, but she read the look, and clasping her arms closely around Anna's neck, she buried her face on her shoulder.
"Will you accept of this?" said Mrs. Carleton, speaking very gently, and at the same time lifting the lid of the box.
Louisita sprang at the contents as a famished tigress might have sprung upon some long-sought prey. Jerking the box out of Mrs. Carleton's hands, she put it on the ground, and again raised her sword. "Hence," she cried, "all of you; no one enters here. Ha, what do I see; stop, stop," she screamed. "Donna Inez, my lady, Donna Inez. Where did you get that ring," she continued, pointing to Mrs. Carleton's finger, on which she wore the ring that Cora had found. "That is the ring Donna Inez wore the night they murdered her. Yes, the accursed sex murdered her, the night they drank out of the skulls till they were all mad, mad, and the great tower fell upon them; ha, ha, ha. Who will drink out of their skulls when they find them? More of the accursed sex, they who make laws to command women, and who cannot command themselves. Away with you. I tell you to go, you are intruders."