The Linda rejoined Antinahuel, who, knowing what torture she was preparing to inflict on the young girl, had stopped at a short distance from the spot where he had left her.
When they reached the toldería, the horsemen dismounted and the maiden was untied and transported, half dead, into the same cuarto where, an hour before, she had, for the first time, found herself in the presence of the courtesan.
The appearance of Rosario was really frightful, and would have excited pity in anybody but the tigress whose delight it was to treat her so cruelly. Her long hair hung in loose disorder upon her half-naked shoulders, and at various spots adhered to her face through the blood which had flowed from her wound; her face, soiled with blood and dirt, wore a greenish cast, and her half-closed lips showed that her teeth were tightly clenched. Her wrists and ankles, to which still hung strips of the thick cord by which she had been fastened to the horse, were frightfully bruised and discoloured. Her delicate frame was convulsed with nervous quiverings, and her faint breathing painfully issued from her heaving chest.
"Poor girl!" the chief murmured.
"Why, chief!" said the Linda, with a sardonic smile. "I scarcely know you! Good Heavens! how love can change a man! What, you, intrepid warrior, pity the fate of this poor maudlin chit! I really believe you will weep over her like a woman, next!"
"Yes," the chief said; "my sister speaks truly, I scarcely know myself! Oh!" he added, bitterly, "is it possible that I, Antinahuel, to whom the Huincas have done so much wrong, can be so? This woman is of an accursed race; she is in my power, I could avenge myself upon her, satisfy the hatred that devours me, make her endure the must atrocious injuries!—and, I dare not!—no, I dare not!"
"Does my brother, then, love this woman so much?" the Linda asked, in a soft, insinuating tone.
Antinahuel looked at her as if she had awakened him suddenly from his sleep; he fixed his dull eyes upon her, and exclaimed—
"Do I love her?—love her!—let my sister listen. Before dying, and going to hunt in the blessed prairies with the just warriors, my father called me to him, and placing his mouth to my ear—'My son, he said, thou art the last of our race; Don Tadeo de León is also the last of his; since the coming of the palefaces, the family of that man has been always fatally opposed to ours, everywhere and under all circumstances. Swear to kill that man whom it has never been in my power to reach!' I swore to do it. Good!' he said, Pillian loves children who obey their father; let my son mount his best horse, and go in search of his enemy. Then, with a sigh, my father bade me depart. Without replying, I saddled, as he had commanded me, my best horse, and went to the city called Santiago, resolved to kill my enemy."
"Well?" the Linda asked, seeing him stop short.