Her face had lost its placid mask and assumed an expression of hatred of which such lovely features would have been thought incapable; with frowning brow, clenched teeth, and pallid cheeks, as she stood before the maiden, she might have been taken for the genius of evil, preparing to seize the victim which it holds fascinated and gasping beneath its deadly glance.
"Yes," she said, in a hollow voice, "this woman is lovely; she has all needed to be beloved by a man. She told me the truth—he loves her! And I," she added, with a movement of rage, "why does he not love me? I am lovely too—more lovely than this one, perhaps. How is it that he has been at least twenty times in my presence, and his heart has never been warmed by the fire that flashed from my eyes? Whence comes it that he has never noticed me, that all my advances to make him love me have remained futile, and that he has never thought of anyone but the woman lying asleep there, who is in my power, and whom I could kill if I pleased?"
While uttering these words she had drawn from her girdle a small stiletto, with a blade sharp as the tongue of a cascabel.
"No!" she added, after a moment's reflection, "No, it is not thus that she must die! She would not suffer enough. Oh, no! I mean her to endure all the sufferings that are lacerating me. Jealousy shall torture her heart as it has done mine for so long. Voto a Dios! I will avenge myself as a Spanish woman should do. If he despise me, if he will not love me, neither of us shall have him; we shall both suffer, and her torture will alleviate mine. Oh! Oh!" she said, with a smile, as she walked round the sleeping girl with the muffled tread of a wild beast; "fair-haired girl, with lily complexion, your cheeks covered with the velvety down of a peach, will ere long be as pale as mine, and your eyes, red with fever, will no longer find tears to soothe them."
She bent over Ellen, attentively listened to her regular breathing, and certain that she was plunged in a deep sleep, she walked toward the curtain door of the hut, raised it cautiously, and after looking around her in the obscurity, feeling assured by the calmness that surrounded her, she stepped over the body of Curumilla, who was lying across the door, and started off hurriedly, but with such light steps that the most practised ear could not have noticed the sound.
The Indian warrior had taken on himself the duty of watching over the two women. When the scalp dance was ended he returned to install himself at the spot he had selected, and, in spite of the remarks of Valentine and Don Pablo, who assured him that they were in safety, and it was unnecessary for him to remain there, nothing could make him give up his resolution.
Phlegmatically shaking his head at his friend's remarks, he took off his buffalo robe without any further response; he stretched it on the ground, and lay down on it, wishing them good night with a brief but peremptory nod. The others, seeing the Araucano's immoveable resolve, philosophically went away, shaking their heads.
Curumilla was not asleep—not one of the Spanish girl's movements escaped him; and she had scarce gone ten yards when he was already on her trail, watching her carefully. Why he did so he was himself ignorant; but a secret foreboding warned him to follow the stranger, and try to learn for what reason, instead of sleeping, she traversed at so late an hour the camp in which she was a prisoner, and where she consequently exposed herself to come in contact at each step with a ferocious enemy, who would have killed her with delight.
The reason that made her brave so imminent a danger must be very powerful, and that reason the Indian chief determined on knowing.
The girl had difficulty in finding her way through this inextricable labyrinth of huts and tents, against which she stumbled at every step. The night was dark; the moon, veiled under a dense mass of clouds, only displayed its sickly disc at lengthened intervals; not a star gleamed in the sky.