"To capture them somehow," Antinahuel replied.
After speaking these words, he bowed to the general and retired. Don Pancho remained plunged in serious reflection.
He turned round with surprise, and with difficulty repressed a cry of horror—it was Doña Maria, her clothes torn and stained with blood and dirt, and her face enveloped in bandages and bloody linen.
"I appear horrible to you, Don Pancho," she said, in a low voice.
"Señora;" the general began, warmly; but she interrupted him.
"Do not debase yourself by a lie unworthy of you and of me."
"Señora, I beg you to believe——"
"You no longer love me, I tell you, Don Pancho," she replied, bitterly; "besides, have I not sacrificed everything to you? I had nothing left but my beauty—I gave you that, joyfully."
"I will not reply to the disguised recriminations you address to me."
"Oh, a truce with these trivialities," she interrupted violently. "If love can no longer unite us, hatred can, we have the same enemy."