I breathed again; she surely could not mean me.
“There is now—there has been some time,” she continued, after a short pause. “Know you who he is?”
I said that I had not the slightest idea.
“Yourself, señor; you are the man.”
“Impossible, Mamcuna! I am of very inferior rank, indeed—a common soldier, a mere nobody.”
“You are too modest, señor; you do yourself an injustice. A man with so white a skin, a beard so long, and eyes so beautiful must be of royal lineage, and fit to mate even with the daughter of the Incas.”
“You are quite mistaken, Mamcuna; I am utterly unworthy of so great an honor.”
“You are not, I tell you. Please don’t contradict me, señor” (she always called me ‘señor’); “it makes me angry. You are the man whom I delight to honor and desire to wed; what would you have more?”
“Nothing—I would not have so much. You are too good; but it would be wrong. I really cannot let you throw yourself away on a nameless foreigner. Besides what would your caciques say?”
“If any man dare say a word against you I will have his tongue torn out by the roots.”