Part 38 (2/2)
”Where?”
”Here, here! I will confess every thing, every thing! I know it is a crime. I am a wretch; but you who are my mother will take me out of this h.e.l.l. Give your consent. Say one word to me, only one word!”
”That man here in my house!” cried Dona Perfecta, springing back several paces from her daughter.
Rosario followed her on her knees. At the same instant three blows were heard, three crashes, three reports. It was the heart of Maria Remedios knocking at the door through the knocker. The house trembled with awful dread. Mother and daughter stood motionless as statues.
A servant went down stairs to open the door, and shortly afterward Maria Remedios, who was not now a woman but a basilisk enveloped in a mantle, entered Dona Perfecta's room. Her face, flushed with anxiety, exhaled fire.
”He is there, he is there!” she said, as she entered. ”He got into the garden through the condemned door.”
She paused for breath at every syllable.
”I know already,” returned Dona Perfecta, with a sort of bellow.
Rosario fell senseless on the floor.
”Let us go down stairs,” said Dona Perfecta, without paying any attention to her daughter's swoon.
The two women glided down stairs like two snakes. The maids and the man-servant were in the hall, not knowing what to do. Dona Perfecta pa.s.sed through the dining-room into the garden, followed by Maria Remedios.
”Fortunately we have Ca-Ca-Ca-balluco there,” said the canon's niece.
”Where?”
”In the garden, also. He cli-cli-climbed over the wall.”
Dona Perfecta explored the darkness with her wrathful eyes. Rage gave them the singular power of seeing in the dark peculiar to the feline race.
”I see a figure there,” she said. ”It is going toward the oleanders.”
”It is he!” cried Remedios. ”But there comes Ramos--Ramos!”
The colossal figure of the Centaur was plainly distinguishable.
”Toward the oleanders, Ramos! Toward the oleanders!”
Dona Perfecta took a few steps forward. Her hoa.r.s.e voice, vibrating with a terrible accent, hissed forth these words:
”Cristobal, Cristobal--kill him!”
A shot was heard. Then another.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
CONCLUSION
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