"Hear me out," she continued in the same tone. "Melinza also decides that these orders do not include the English señorita, Doña Margaret, whom he intends to detain here for——for reasons best known to himself; although the other Governor of San Augustin decrees"——she started up from her nest of pillows and continued in a wholly different tone: "I say—I say—that you shall quit this place with the other prisoners, and my husband dares not oppose me! I am sick of your white face and your saintly blue eyes; I am wearied to death of your company; but I swear Melinza shall not have you! Therefore go you must, and speedily."
"And leave my betrothed at Don Pedro's mercy?"
"What is that to me? Let him rot in his dungeon. I care not—so I am rid of your white face."
She shut her eyes angrily and thrust out her slippered foot at the sleeping hound. He lifted his great head and yawned; then, gathering up his huge bulk from the ground, he drew closer to his mistress's side and sniffed the air with solicitude, as though seeking a cause for her displeasure. There was a dish of cakes beside her, and she took one in her white fingers and threw it to the dog. He let it fall to the ground, and nosed it doubtfully, putting forth an experimental tongue,—till, finding it to his taste, he swallowed it at a gulp. His mistress laughed, and tossed him another, which disappeared in his great jaws. A third met the same fate; but the fourth she extended to him in her pink palm, and, as he would have taken it she snatched the hand away. Again and again the poor brute strove to seize the proffered morsel, but each time it was lifted out of his reach; till finally his lithe body was launched upward, and he snapped both the cake and the hand that teased him.
'Twas the merest scratch, and truly the dog meant it not in anger; but on the instant Doña Orosia flushed crimson to her very brow, and, drawing up her silken skirt, she snatched a jewelled dagger from her garter and plunged it to the hilt in the poor beast's throat. The red blood spouted, and the huge body dropped in a tawny heap.
I rushed forward and lifted the great head; but the eyes were glazed.
"Señora!" I cried, "señora! the poor brute loved you!"
She spurned the limp body with a careless foot, saying,—
"So did—once—the man who gave it me."
Then she clapped her hands, and the negro servant came and at her command dragged away the carcass, wiped the bloody floor, and brought a basin of clear water and a linen cloth to bathe the scratch on her hand. When he had gone she made me bind it up with her broidered kerchief and stamped her foot because I drew the knot over-tight.