urned
away her head. This affectation of contempt brought the patience of
the doctora to an end. Leaving her husband without support, she went,
trembling with rage, powerless to utter a word, and placed herself
in front of the alfereza's window. Dona Consolacion turned her head
slowly back, regarded her antagonist with the utmost calm, and spat
again with the same cool contempt.

"What's the matter with you, dona?" she asked.

"Could you tell me, senora, why you stare at me in this fashion? Are
you jealous?" Dona Victorina was at last able to say.

"I jealous? And of you?" replied the alfereza calmly. "Yes, I'm
jealous of your frizzes."

"Come away there!" broke in the doctor; "d--d--don't pay
at--t--t--tention to these f--f--follies!"

"Let me alone! I have to give a lesson to this brazenface!" replied
the doctora, joggling her husband, who just missed sprawling in
the dust.

"Consider to whom you are speaking!" she said haughtily, turning
back to Dona Consolacion. "Don't think I am a provincial or a woman
of your class. With us, at Manila, the alferezas are not received;
they wait at the door."

"Ho! ho! most worshipful senora, the alferezas wait at the door! But
you receive such paralytics as this gentleman! Ha! ha! ha!"

Had she been less powdered Dona Victorina might have been seen to
blush. She started to rush on her enemy, but the sentinel stood in
the way. The street was filling with a curious crowd.

"Know that I demean myself in speaking to you; persons of position
like me ought not! Will you wash my clothes? I will pay you well. Do
you suppose I do not know you are a washerwoman?"

Dona Consolacion sat erect. To be called a washerwoman had wounded her.

"And do you think we don't know who you are?" she retorted. "My
husband has told me! Senora, I, at least----"

But she could not be heard. Dona Victorina, wildly shaking her fists,
screamed out:

"Come down, you old hussy, come down and let me tear your beautiful
eyes out!"

Rapidly the medusa disappeared from the window; more rapidly yet
she came running down the steps, brandishing her husband's terrible
whip. Don Tiburcio, supplicating both, threw himself between, but he
could not have prevented the combat, had not the alferez arrived.

"Well, well, senoras!--Don Tiburcio!"

"Give your wife a little more breeding, buy her more beautiful clothes,
and if you haven't the money, steal it from the people of the pueblo;
you have soldiers for