“Hold your tongue, ungrateful girl; hypocrite, rather. You will gain nothing by concealing the profound impression which his curling locks have made upon you.”
“Yes, taken from some dead man’s head,” said the girl, smiling humorously.
“His pearly teeth and his slender form. But lay no plans, traitress, for I will not allow you to follow that Don Juan. If you should prove false to your duty, be prepared to die at my hands. I will tear your heart out if you betray me.”
He ran his hand through her tresses caressingly, and murmured softly:
“Suriña will not go with the old man. Suriña belongs to me. Who wanted to steal her from me? Let them prepare to defend themselves; let them prepare to defend themselves. Suriña is mine!”
XVII.
On the following day Doña Aurora was so much better that she was able to sit up for a couple of hours, and when night came she refused to consent to Rogelio’s sleeping in her room. “It does not suit me,” she said. “You don’t sleep comfortably; you lie awake for a long time; you toss about; you chat with Esclavita. Last night I could hear you between sleeping and waking, and then you get up in the morning looking pale and miserable; and you have no appetite.” When Señora de Pardiñas was saying this the girl, who had been going about the room putting things in order, turned her back quickly to her, pretending to be looping up a curtain which had become unfastened, an operation which
“The girl ... turned her back quickly to her, pretending to be looping up a curtain.”
engaged her attention for some time. The student fixed his eyes with alarm on his mother’s countenance; but that dear face, so little schooled in dissimulation, and so familiar to him in its every line, reflected no other thought than that to which her lips had given utterance, and the student, breathing freely once more, acceded to her wish that he should sleep that night in his own room. His mother was not without reason in saying that he needed sleep. At the most important stage of his development, his health not yet fully established after a childhood, if not precisely sickly, at least weakly, his delicate organization was easily disturbed, and the three nights of wakefulness he had spent had begun to tell upon him.