irt. His sleeve, ripped open by the bull's horn, disclosed his
arm a long violet scar. For an he tottered, and seemed about to fall,
suffocated by the violence of his emotions; but he promptly recovered
himself, ran to his sword, picked it up, straightened the bent blade
with his foot, and placed himself with his back towards the place where
Militona sat. At a sign he made, the chulos led the bull towards him by
tantalising it with their cloaks; and this time he dealt the animal a
downward thrust, in strict conformity with the laws of the sport--such a
one as the great Montes of Chiclana himself would not have disowned. The
sword was planted between the shoulders, and its cross-hilt, rising
between the horns of the bull, reminded of those Gothic engravings where
St Hubert is seen kneeling before a stag which bears a crucifix in its
antlers.

The bull fell heavily on its knees before Juancho, as if doing homage to
his superiority, and after a short convulsion rolled over, its four feet
in the air.

"Juancho has taken a brilliant revenge! What a splendid thrust! He is
superior to Arjona and the Chiclanero; do you not think so, Senorita?"
cried Andres enthusiastically to his neighbour.

"For God's sake, sir, not another word!" replied Militona very quickly,
without turning her head and scarcely moving her lips. The words were
spoken in a tone at once so imperative and so imploring, that Andres
immediately saw it was not the artifice of a young girl begging to be
let alone, and hoping to be disobeyed. Neither could modesty dictate the
injunction. Nothing he had said called for such rigour, and manolas, the
grisettes of Madrid, are not usually--be it said without calumny--of
such extreme susceptibility. Real terror, apprehension of a danger
unknown to Andres, was indicated by the hasty sentence.

"Can she be a princess in disguise?" said Andres to himself,
considerably puzzled how to act. "If I hold my tongue, I shall look like
a fool, or, at any rate, like a very middling sort of Don Juan: if I
persist, I shall perhaps cause the poor girl some disagreeable scene.
Can she be afraid of the duenna? Hardly. When that amiable old sorceress
devoured my comfits, she became in some sort an accomplice. It cannot be
she whom my infanta dreads. Is there a father, brother, husband, or
jealous lover in the neighbourhood?" But on looking around, Andres could
discover no one who seemed to pay the slightest attention to the
proceedings