Doña Jesuita started, a nervous shudder crept through the whole of her frame.
"You have been very clement," she said in a cutting tone, and with bitter irony; "you have been very clement towards a boy of sixteen, Don Ramón; you felt a repugnance to bathe your hands in his blood, and you have preferred leaving that task to the wild beasts and ferocious Indians who alone people those solitudes."
"He was guilty!" the hacendero replied, in a low but firm voice.
"A child is never guilty in the eyes of her who has borne him in her bosom, and nourished him with her milk," she said with energy. "It is well, Don Ramón, you have condemned your son, I—I will save him!"
"What would you do?" the hacendero said, terrified at the resolution he saw kindled in the eyes of his wife.
"What matters it to you? Don Ramón, I will accomplish my duty as you believe you have accomplished yours! God will judge between us! Tremble, lest He should one day demand of you an account of the blood of your son!"
Don Ramón bent his head beneath this anathema; with a pale brow, and a mind oppressed by heavy remorse, he went slowly into the hacienda.
Doña Jesuita looked after him for an instant.
"Oh!" she cried, "may God grant that I may arrive in time!"
She then went out from the portico, followed by Nô Eusebio.