“Lavinia,” he asked, “is it possible—do you mean that you care the least about me?”
“It must be that, Cesare, because I am so terribly afraid.”
Later he admitted ruefully:
“But no man should resemble, as I do, a great oyster. I shall pay very dearly for my laziness.”
“You are not going to fight Mochales!” she protested. “It would be insanity.”
“Insanity,” he agreed promptly. “Yet I can't permit myself to be the target for vile tongues.”
Lavinia abruptly left him and hurried to her sister's room. The door was locked; she knocked, but got no response.
“Gheta,” she called, low and urgently, “open at once! Your plans have gone dreadfully wrong. Gheta!” she said more sharply into the answering silence. “Cesare has had a terrific argument with Mochales, and worse may follow. Open!” There was still no answer, and suddenly she beat upon the door with her fists. “Liar!” she cried thinly through the wood. “Liar! You bitter old stick! I'll make you eat that necklace, pearl for pearl, sorrow for sorrow!”
A feeling of impotence overwhelmed her at the implacable stillness that succeeded her hysterical outburst. She stood with a pounding heart, and clasped straining fingers.
Abrego y Mochales could kill Cesare without the slightest shadow of a question. There was, she recognized, something essentially feminine in the saturnine bullfighter; his pride had been severely assaulted; and therefore he would be—in his own, less subtle manner—as dangerous as Gheta. Cesare's self-esteem, too, had been wounded in its most vulnerable place—he had been insulted before her. But, even if the latter refused to proceed, Mochales, she knew, would force an acute conclusion. There was nothing to be got from her sister and she slowly returned to her chamber, from which she could hear Orsi's heavy footfalls.