"No!"
At that, laughing the louder, he opened the top of his vest and put his hand down beneath his shirt and undershirt. Presently, from under his armpit, he drew out a small, mahogany-colored leather purse and let Felicidad look into it. Within was a roll of bills, tightly wound and compressed so that they took up but little space. Felicidad gasped with fright and horror when she saw the color of the top bank note. It was a bank note on the Bank of Spain for five thousand pesetas! Her father, the terrible Don Jaime, had been paid by the English book-buyer in five-thousand peseta bills!
But Jacques Ferou was saying:
"You know, your father mentioned offering the books to the English firm when he wrote that letter to Paris. Therefore, I delayed my journey to Spain so that I should not reach your father's house until the English book-buyer had paid over the money for the purchased books and had left with his purchases. Ma chérie, I came to Spain, not for books, but for this. This is the money paid to your father for his books!" And he held up the small mahogany-colored leather purse that had been Felicidad's father's.
Sometime since, when with cruel, malicious delight he had started to tell her of his criminal operations, Felicidad had drawn away from him in horror. Now she started up, crying out in supreme contempt:
"So you stole all the money that was to keep my father in his old age! Oh, you—you disgusting thief!"
He saw then that he had been too open, too bold, too braggard. He tried to quiet and soothe her with caressing hands, with kisses. But her lips had become cold as ice, and they shrank away from his in profound loathing.
They were alone in the regulation separated continental coach. She tried to tear herself from his arms and to throw herself from the moving train. Death was all she thought of at first. By allowing herself to be cajoled into running off with a creature who had no more decency than to rob the father of his all, while he stole from him also his only daughter, she had disgraced the high name of Torreblanca y Moncada. What a blow this would be at the pride of the eagle-haughty Don Jaime! He had never forgiven her mother for her desertion. Of a surety, never would he forgive Felicidad!
But even as Felicidad despaired and thought of death, there had come to her the protector of her childhood days, Jacinto Quesada. And to him she now appealed, saying with the ferocity of desperation:
"The leather purse is still strapped under his armpit next his skin! Go quickly and take it from him! You should have found it in the search; then I would not have had to do as I have since done. That purse contains the happiness of my father's old age. Tear it from that yellow-livered Frenchman and return it in some way to Don Jaime!"