“The alferez has insulted us. The old witch came down with her whip, and that thing there allowed it all. A man!”
“Pshaw!” said Sinang. “They have been fighting and we haven’t seen it.”
“The alferez has broken the doctor’s teeth,” added Victoria.
“This very day we are going to Manila. You stay here to challenge him to a duel, and, if you don’t, I’ll tell Don Santiago that all that you have told him is a lie. I will tell him——”
“But, Doña Victorina! Doña Victorina!” interrupted Linares, pale and going closer to her. “You keep quiet. Don’t make me call to mind”——and he added in a low voice—“Don’t be imprudent, especially just now.”
Just at that time, when this was going on, Captain Tiago arrived home from the cock-pit. He was downhearted. He had lost his lásak.
But Doña Victorina did not give him much time to sigh. In a few words, and with many insults, she related to him what had passed, she, of course, trying to put herself in a good light.
“Linares is going to challenge him. Do you hear? If he don’t, I won’t let him marry your daughter. Don’t you permit it. If he has no courage, he does not merit Clarita.”
“Then you are going to marry this gentleman?” asked Sinang, with her jolly eyes full of tears. “I knew that you were discreet, but I did not think you so fickle.”
Maria Clara, pale as wax, raising herself half up, looked at her father with frightened eyes, and then at Doña Victorina and Linares. The latter turned red in the face, Captain Tiago looked down, and the señora added: