Don Abrahan turned from the door as Roberto flung her hand away with such gesture of contempt, such complete abandonment, that the magistrate stood stiffly, his limbs checked in their function by his great amazement. "This is not well," he said sternly. "False!" Helena repeated in scorn. "Who is it that has mooned and sighed under windows, and caught flowers thrown by coquettes--and worse? What have I heard from the capital of the doings of Don Roberto that would turn my heart to him or make him dear? Roberto, if there ever was any obligation to you on my part, I have been absolved from it long ago." "You were betrothed to me; it was a holy compact," Roberto said. His voice shook with sickness of the shame he believed had been put upon him; he stood clenching his hands and scowling, ready, it seemed, to begin the chastisement that he had threatened. "This is folly," Don Abrahan said, attempting to soothe their young passion with the unction of his steady word. "All the world knows there was a betrothal between you two, years ago." [Illustration] "It wasn't of my making," Helena reminded him, bitterly accusing in the recollection of that bargain and conveyance, after the country's custom. "What you and my father arranged between you when I was a child cannot bind me now, Don Abrahan. I repudiate it, I throw it in your face!" "It cannot be done so lightly," Don Abrahan said, thinking of the lands and herds, and the gold that the Yankee captain had plucked out of air like a magician, all now in the hands of this girl, all now about to take wing and fly out of his family's reach forever. "It cannot be done so easily, Helena. There is much to consider before pulling down shame upon my house, disgrace upon your own." "Disgrace! And she would buy a lover for a price!" Roberto groaned, burning already in the fire of humiliation. "It is only the--the--disgraceful sort you know so well, Roberto, who have love to sell for a price," she said. "Don Abrahan, I leave you to your repose." "Youth is too quick," said Don Abrahan regretfully, as Helena disappeared down the dark hall, leaving her candle on the window-sill to light them to such repose as the night's upheaval had left them. "Tomorrow you will repair the damage with soft words." "Tomorrow," said Roberto portentously, "it will be another thing. I am no longer a boy. I have grown the teeth of a man this night; I can bite." CHAPTER IX DON ROBERTO BITES Roberto found the air of his room stifling, the confinement of its walls oppressive. It seemed that the teeth of a man, which he had become cognizant of possessing only that night ached for something to fasten upon and try their strength, urging him out into the open with savage restlessness.