ly, happy to be admired. The admiration of De Marsay became
a secret fury, and he unveiled her completely, throwing a glance at her
which the Spaniard understood as though she had been used to receive
such.

"If you are not to be mine, mine only, I will kill you!" he cried.

Hearing this speech, Paquita covered her face in her hands, and cried
naively:

"Holy Virgin! What have I brought upon myself?"

She rose, flung herself down upon the red sofa, and buried her head in
the rags which covered the bosom of her mother, and wept there. The
old woman received her daughter without issuing from her state of
immobility, or displaying any emotion. The mother possessed in the
highest degree that gravity of savage races, the impassiveness of a
statue upon which all remarks are lost. Did she or did she not love her
daughter? Beneath that mask every human emotion might brood--good and
evil; and from this creature all might be expected. Her gaze passed
slowly from her daughter's beautiful hair, which covered her like a
mantle, to the face of Henri, which she considered with an indescribable
curiosity.

She seemed to ask by what fatality he was there, from what caprice
Nature had made so seductive a man.

"These women are making sport of me," said Henri to himself.

At that moment Paquita raised her head, cast at him one of those looks
which reach the very soul and consume it. So beautiful seemed she that
he swore he would possess such a treasure of beauty.

"My Paquita! Be mine!"

"Wouldst thou kill me?" she said fearfully, palpitating and anxious, but
drawn towards him by an inexplicable force.

"Kill thee--I!" he said, smiling.

Paquita uttered a cry of alarm, said a word to the old woman, who
authoritatively seized Henri's hand and that of her daughter. She gazed
at them for a long time, and then released them, wagging her head in a
fashion horribly significant.

"Be mine--this evening, this moment; follow me, do not leave me! It must
be, Paquita! Dost thou love me? Come!"

In a moment he had poured out a thousand foolish words to her, with the
rapidity of a torrent coursing between the rocks, and repeating the same
sound in a thousand different forms.

"It is the same voice!" said Paquita, in a melancholy voice, which
De Marsay could not overhear, "and the same ardor," she added. "So be
it--yes," she said, with an abandonment of passion which no words can
describe. "Yes; but not to-night. To-night Adolphe, I g