senora! why do you look at me in that
way? You are not my mother.

"Would to God that I were not! Rejoice in the harm you are doing me. You
are killing me; you have given me my death-blow!" cried Dona Perfecta,
with indescribable agitation. "You say that this man--"

"Is my husband--I will be his wife, protected by the law. You are not a
woman! Why do you look at me in that way? You make me tremble. Mother,
mother, do not condemn me!"

"You have already condemned yourself--that is enough. Obey me, and I
will forgive you. Answer me--when did you receive letters from that
man?"

"To-day."

"What treachery! What infamy!" cried her mother, roaring rather than
speaking. "Had you appointed a meeting?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"To-night."

"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
hell. 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
passed 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 sai