She pauses before making the ascent. She has reined up under the umbrageous cypress—fit canopy for a sorrowing heart. Its sombre shade appears more desirable than the sunlight above.
It is not this that has caused her to pull up. There is a thought in her soul darker than the shadow of the cypress. It is evinced by her clouded brow; by her black eyebrows contracted over her black flashing eyes; above all, by an expression of fierceness in the contrast of her white teeth gleaming under the moustached lip.
All that is good of woman, except beauty, seems to have forsaken—all that is bad, except ugliness, to have taken possession of her!
She has paused at the prompting of a demon—with an infernal purpose half formed in her mind. Her muttered speeches proclaim it. “I should have killed her upon the spot! Shall I go back, and dare her to deadly strife?”
“If I killed her, what would it avail? It could not win me back his heart—lost, lost, without hope! Yes; those words were from the secret depths of his soul; where her image alone has found an abiding place! Oh! there is no hope for me!
“’Tis he who should die; he who has caused my ruin. If I kill him? Ah, then; what would life be to me? Prom that hour an endless anguish!
“Oh! it is anguish now! I cannot endure it. I can think of no solace—if not in revenge. Not only she, he also—both must die!
“But not yet—not till he know, by whose hand it is done. Oh! he shall feel his punishment, and know whence it comes. Mother of God, strengthen me to take vengeance!”
She lances the flank of her horse, and spurs him, up the slope of the ravine.
On reaching the upper plain, she does not stop—even for the animal to breathe itself—but goes on at a reckless gait, and in a direction that appears undetermined. Neither hand nor voice are exerted in the guidance of her steed—only the spur to urge him on.