"Listen!"
"What is it?" she said, turning back, as she was going away, and glancing at him with two smiling, malicious eyes that completed her conquest of him.
"Pardon, if my words offended you."
Fernanda tossed her head disdainfully and went off, exclaiming:
"Repent sinner, or hell will have you!"
"Hell!"
This word, uttered at random, as a joke, gave him a sudden shock, and called him back again to the habitual tenor of his thoughts. All the Gayosos had lived under the influence of this baneful idea. But the terror of his ancestors seemed concentrated in his mind, tormenting and maddening him to a degree. Amalia had had a hard struggle to distract him for a little time from his scruples. Therefore, when she now signed to him to come to her she saw he moodily rose from his seat, and came towards her with slow, unwilling steps. She had too much tact and pride to show any vexation at the short conversation just held with his old fiancée. She received him with the same smile, speaking with her habitually assumed tone of cheerfulness, and she did not mention Fernanda's name. But her pallid lips contracted with anger every time his eyes turned towards the girl, which they often unwittingly did.
A beautiful child with blue eyes and long fair hair now appeared at the door with a servant.
"Oh, how late!" exclaimed the Señora de Quiñones. "Why are you so late in bringing her, Paula?" she added severely.
The servant replied that the child was so amused at playing: "Let them give to the kite," that she cried every time they wanted her to go to bed.