“Yes.”
“When?”
“To-night.”
“Where?”
“Here, here! I will confess every thing, every thing! I know it is a crime. I am a wretch; but you who are my mother will take me out of this hell. Give your consent. Say one word to me, only one word!”
“That man here in my house!” cried Doña Perfecta, springing back several paces from her daughter.
Rosario followed her on her knees. At the same instant three blows were heard, three crashes, three reports. It was the heart of Maria Remedios knocking at the door through the knocker. The house trembled with awful dread. Mother and daughter stood motionless as statues.
A servant went down stairs to open the door, and shortly afterward Maria Remedios, who was not now a woman but a basilisk enveloped in a mantle, entered Doña Perfecta’s room. Her face, flushed with anxiety, exhaled fire.
“He is there, he is there!” she said, as she entered. “He got into the garden through the condemned door.”
She paused for breath at every syllable.