“To one Sancho Gordo.”
“To Sancho Gordo?” The frown deepened. “The washerwoman's son? You will not tell me that he bought it?”
“I do not tell you so, madame. It was a gift from the Prince, your husband.”
“A gift!” She laughed. “To Sancho Gordo! So the washerwoman's child is Eboli's son!”
And again she laughed on a note of deep contempt.
“Madame!” I cried, appalled and full of pity, “I assure you that you assume too much. The Prince—”
“Let be,” she interrupted me. “Do you dream I care what rivals I may have had, however lowly they may have been? The Prince, my husband, is dead, and that is very well. He is much better dead, Don Antonio. The pity of it is that he ever lived, or else that I was born a woman.”
She was staring straight before her, her hands fallen to her lap, her face set as if carved and lifeless, and her voice came hard as the sound of one stone beating upon another.
“Do you dream what it can mean to have been so nurtured on indignities that there is no anger left, no pride to wound by the discovery of yet another nothing but cold, cold hate? That, Don Antonio, is my case. You do not know what my life has been. That man—”
“He is dead, madame,” I reminded her, out of pity.