"Oh, men, men!" cried he, with feverish energy, "Will the heart of woman then always remain incomprehensible to you? Will you never be able to read a single page of it? Can you not understand that your sister—that artless and pure child of sixteen years, downcast by the grief of an unmerited shame, succumbing under the weight of a fault that she never committed—did not choose to bend her stainless brow, and to blush before that implacable world for which appearances are everything, and which always thinks the worst? Will you not admit, then, that sublime abnegation which has made her, still living, cut herself off from the world which respects the dead martyr, whom living it would insult?"
"But," cried Zeno Cabral, dumfounded by these words, spoken in a tone of irresistible truthfulness, "who has told you that this is really the case?"
"Who—who?" murmured Arnal, in a feeble and trembling voice.
And, taking off her hat, she allowed some long and silky brown hair to fall in disorder on her shoulders.
"Laura! My sister!" cried the partisan, rushing towards her.
"My brother! My brother!" murmured she, in a broken voice.
"Courage, my child!" said Tarou Niom, gently.
Suddenly the sound of a pistol was heard; everyone turned with anxiety; the marquis, with his skull fractured, was writhing in agony.
"I have revenged my mother," said Gueyma, coldly, showing the smoking weapon that he still held in his hand.