A few moments of awful silence followed; all eyes were fixed on Jacinto, whose mouth was open, and whose eyes were fixed on vacancy. The sudden shock had rendered him a hopeless idiot.
The Duke d’Arenas looked at the marquis with an earnest supplicating expression; and then, falling on his knees before him, exclaimed, “Pardon me, I have suffered!”
“I curse thee! Duke d’Arenas.”
“Behold me at thy feet, Marquis de San Payo!”
“Begone!” cried the old man, sternly; “there are between us the corpses of my wife and of my eldest son, besides this other ruin, whose destruction you have just achieved; I am now childless!”
The Duke d’Arenas fixed on the marquis a look so filled with sorrow and despair, that it might have sufficed to satisfy his vengeance.
“And I,” he said, bending his head, “can never again know repose, except in the grave!”