Perhaps the rejected seducer would have gone on flinging at his expected victim other coarse insults and cowardly jests like the above, but at that instant Maximina's quick ear caught the soft and delicate voice of her little one, who was just waking up in the sleeping-room; it was so slight a sound that only a mother could have heard it at that distance.
She threw down the razor, and exclaimed, "My heart's delight, I am coming."
She flew like an arrow past Don Alfonso. If he had attempted to stay her flight, she would certainly have knocked him over with the impetus that she had and her muscular development.
The caballero had no thought of doing any such thing. What he did was to turn on his heels, take his hat, and set out to dissipate his ill humor and vexation on the Castellana.
Maximina's calmness quickly returned. Nevertheless, a few hours afterward she began to feel such an intense chill that she was obliged to go to bed and ask for a cup of tila. On the following day she was all right again. She thought of sending word to Miguel, asking him to come home, but on second thought she saw that she would be obliged to give some reason, and she had none. And if he should have any suspicion and oblige her to confess what had taken place? He would certainly challenge Saavedra, who, as he was an expert in such affairs, would kill him.
"Oh, I would kill myself sooner than tell him!"
And the faithful wife, at the mere thought of it, shivered with horror.
XXIV.
"The first part of my plan has 'gang agley'; now let us see if I shall be luckier in the second," said Don Alfonso, on leaving Miguel's house.
That afternoon, while his eyes were wandering at haphazard over the throng of carriages flying up and down the Castellana, he was deeply engaged in concocting the most odious and villanous plans, which we shall shortly find him carrying into execution.