At this terrible sentence, Doña Jesuita took a few steps towards her son, but, tottering, she fell prostrate—she had fainted.
Up to this moment Rafaël had, with a great effort, suppressed in his heart the emotions which agitated him, but at this last accident he could no longer restrain himself; he sprang towards his mother, burst into tears, and uttered a piercing cry:
"My mother! my mother!"
"Come this way," said Don Ramón, laying his hand upon his shoulder.
The boy stopped, staggering like a drunken man.
"Look, sir! pray look!" he cried, with a heartbroken sob; "my mother is dying!"
"It is you who have killed her!" the hacendero replied coldly.
Rafaël turned round as if a serpent had stung him; he darted at his father a look of strange expression, and, with clenched teeth and a livid brow said to him,
"Kill me, sir; for I swear to you that in the same manner as you have been pitiless to my mother and me, if I live I will be hereafter pitiless to you!"
Don Ramón cast upon him a look of contempt.