He called to his servant and gave the order.
Cipriano was in the white pantaloons and blouse, like Ramón. But his sash was scarlet, with black curves, something like the markings on a snake.
“I heard you come. I thought perhaps you had gone away again,” he said, looking at her with a certain black reproachfulness: an odd, hesitating wistfulness of the barbarian, who feels himself at a loss. Then also a certain resentment.
“Not yet,” she said.
Ramón laughed, and flung himself into a chair.
“The Señora Caterina thinks we are all monkeys, but perhaps this particular monkey-show is the most amusing after all,” he said. “So she will see a little more of it.”
Cipriano, a real Indian, was offended in his pride, and the little black imperial on his chin seemed to become portentous.
“That’s rather an unfair way of putting it!” laughed Kate.
The black eyes of Cipriano glanced at her in hostility. He thought she was laughing at him. And so, at the depths of her female soul, she was. She was jeering at him inwardly. Which no man can stand, least of all a dark-skinned man.
“No!” she said. “There’s something else besides that.”