“It would seem that Bohar does not like me,” said Tanar, smiling.
“He dislikes nearly every one,” said Stellara, “but he hates you—now.”
“Because I knocked him down, I suppose. I cannot blame him.”
“That is not the real reason,” said the girl.
“What is, then?”
She hesitated and then she laughed. “He is jealous. Bohar wants me for his mate.”
“But why should he be jealous of me?”
Stellara looked Tanar up and down and then she laughed again. “I do not know,” she said. “You are not much of a man beside our huge Korsars—with your beardless face and your small waist. It would take two of you to make one of them.”
To Tanar her tone implied thinly veiled contempt and it piqued him, but why it should he did not know and that annoyed him, too. What was she but the savage daughter of a savage, boorish Korsar?
When he had first learned from Bohar’s lips that she was the daughter and not the mate of The Cid he had felt an unaccountable relief, half unconsciously and without at all attempting to analyze his reaction.