“Señor! how came you in possession of this?” she asked, without any attempt to disguise her indignation.
“It matters not. I am in possession of it, and of what for many a day I have been seeking; a proof, not that you had ceased to care for me—for this I had good reason to know—but that you had begun to care for him. This tells that you love him—words could not speak plainer. You long to look into his beautiful eyes. Mil demonios! you shall never see them again!”
“What means this, Don Miguel Diaz?”
The question was put not without a slight quivering of the voice that seemed to betray fear. No wonder it should. There was something in the aspect of El Coyote at that moment well calculated to inspire the sentiment.
Observing it, he responded, “You may well show fear: you have reason. If I have lost you, my lady, no other shall enjoy you. I have made up my mind about that.”
“About what?”
“What I have said—that no other shall call you his, and least of all Maurice the mustanger.”
“Indeed!”
“Ay, indeed! Give me a promise that you and he shall never meet again, or you depart not from this place!”
“You are jesting, Don Miguel?”