“Still you were expecting some one?”
“I?” she said; “I? No. I never expect any one.”
There was something grievous in her words which the man, blind, deaf, and insensible to other impressions which were not his own, did not notice.
“I see two cups here,” he pointed, raising his eyebrows.
“One is clean!” she exclaimed, with a burst of laughter meant to be jolly, but really gloomy.
“Yes; but the servant has brought two. He must know something, that fellow; when I am hunting he brings two cups; he is bound to know something.”
“Ask him, Emilio, ask him,” she said gleefully, with an increasingly mischievous laugh.
“I shall do it, don’t doubt,” he said harshly; “but all the servants I pay here adore you far too much. Hence they lie; they lie, the whole lot of them, and I shall never know all the truth.”
“Oh, poor Emilio!” she exclaimed, pitying him, but without any tenderness.
Emilio Guasco’s eyes blazed with anger; for an instant his face became almost livid. He advanced with his heavy, dirty boots on the delicate carpet, and in a vibrant and subdued accent, restraining himself with an effort, but placing in every word, pronounced almost through his closed teeth, all the hidden tempest of his tortured spirit—