“If you are not to be mine, mine only, I will kill you!” he cried.
Hearing this speech, Paquita covered her face in her hands, and cried naively:
“Holy Virgin! What have I brought upon myself?”
She rose, flung herself down upon the red sofa, and buried her head in the rags which covered the bosom of her mother, and wept there. The old woman received her daughter without issuing from her state of immobility, or displaying any emotion. The mother possessed in the highest degree that gravity of savage races, the impassiveness of a statue upon which all remarks are lost. Did she or did she not love her daughter? Beneath that mask every human emotion might brood—good and evil; and from this creature all might be expected. Her gaze passed slowly from her daughter’s beautiful hair, which covered her like a mantle, to the face of Henri, which she considered with an indescribable curiosity.
She seemed to ask by what fatality he was there, from what caprice Nature had made so seductive a man.
“These women are making sport of me,” said Henri to himself.
At that moment Paquita raised her head, cast at him one of those looks which reach the very soul and consume it. So beautiful seemed she that he swore he would possess such a treasure of beauty.
“My Paquita! Be mine!”
“Wouldst thou kill me?” she said fearfully, palpitating and anxious, but drawn towards him by an inexplicable force.
“Kill thee—I!” he said, smiling.