“Will you dance, accursed Indian!” and the whip whistled.
Sisa let herself fall to the floor, trying to cover her feet, and looking at her tormenter with haggard eyes. Two lashes on the shoulders forced her to rise with screams.
Her thin chemise was torn, the skin broken and the blood flowing.
This excited Doña Consolacion still more.
“Dance! Dance!” she howled, and seizing Sisa with one hand, while she beat her with the other, she commenced to leap about again.
At length Sisa understood, and followed, moving her arms without rhythm or measure. A smile of satisfaction came to the lips of the horrible woman—the smile of a female Mephistopheles who has found an apt pupil: hate, scorn, mockery, and cruelty were in it; a burst of demoniacal laughter could not have said more.
Absorbed by her delight in this spectacle, the alféreza did not know that her husband had arrived until the door was violently thrown open with a kick.
The alférez was pale and morose. When he saw what was going on, he darted a terrible glance at his wife, then quietly put his hand on the shoulder of the strange dancer, and stopped her motion. Sisa, breathing hard, sat down on the floor. He called the orderly.
“Take this woman away,” he said; “see that she is properly cared for, and has a good dinner and a good bed. To-morrow she is to be taken to Señor Ibarra’s.”
Then he carefully closed the door after them, pushed the bolt, and approached his wife.