He fell back upon the pillows, livid, dead.
Rubia started forward with a cry.
"It is you who have killed him," cried the woman who had summoned her. The rest of Rubia's escort, vaqueros, peons, and the old alcalde of her native village, stood about with bared heads.
"That is true. That is true," they murmured. The old alcalde stepped forward.
"Who dishonours my friend dishonours me," he said. "From this day,
Señorita Ytuerate, you and I are strangers." He went out, and one by
one, with sullen looks and hostile demeanour, Rubia's escort followed.
Their manner was unmistakable; they were deserting her.
Rubia clasped her hands over her eyes.
"Madre de Dios, Madre de Dios," she moaned over and over again. Then in a low voice she repeated her own words: "May it be a blight to her. From that moment may evil cling to her, bad luck follow her; may she love and not be loved; may friends desert her, her sisters shame her, her brothers disown her——"
There was a clatter of horse's hoofs in the courtyard.
"It is your lover," said her woman coldly from the doorway. "He is riding away from you."
"——and those," added Rubia, "whom she has loved abandon her."