“And before All Saints’ Day ends, which is holy to my saint as well as to yours, so that you can, without compromising yourself, give me a keepsake, will you not do so?” pleaded Alonso, fixing his eyes on his cousin’s, which flashed like lightning, gleaming with a diabolical thought.
“Why not?” she exclaimed, raising her hand to her right shoulder as though seeking for something amid the folds of her wide velvet sleeve embroidered with gold. Then, with an innocent air of disappointment, she added:
“Do you recollect the blue scarf I wore to-day to the hunt,—the scarf which you said, because of something about the meaning of its color, was the emblem of your soul?”
“Yes.”
“Well! it is lost! it is lost, and I was thinking of letting you have it for a souvenir.”
“Lost! where?” asked Alonso, rising from his seat with an indescribable expression of mingled fear and hope.
“I do not know,—perhaps on the mountain.”
“On the Spirits’ Mountain!” he murmured, paling and sinking back into his seat. “On the Spirits’ Mountain!”
Then he went on in a voice choked and broken:
“You know, for you have heard it a thousand times, that I am called in the city, in all Castile, the king of the hunters. Not having yet had a chance to try, like my ancestors, my strength in battle, I have brought to bear on this pastime, the image of war, all the energy of my youth, all the hereditary ardor of my race. The rugs your feet tread on are the spoils of the chase, the hides of the wild beasts I have killed with my own hand. I know their haunts and their habits; I have fought them by day and by night, on foot and on horseback, alone and with hunting-parties, and there is not a man will say that he has ever seen me shrink from danger. On any other night I would fly for that scarf,—fly as joyously as to a festival; but to-night, this one night—why disguise it?—I am afraid. Do you hear? The bells are tolling, the Angelus has sounded in San Juan del Duero, the ghosts of the mountain are now beginning to lift their yellowing skulls from amid the brambles that cover their graves—the ghosts! the mere sight of them is enough to curdle with horror the blood of the bravest, turn his hair white, or sweep him away in the stormy whirl of their fantastic chase as a leaf, unwitting whither, is carried by the wind.”