"You FOOL!" Dona Isabel looked murder. "I'll punish you for this;
I'll make you speak if I have to rub your wounds with salt."

But Sebastian closed his eyes wearily. "You can't make me suffer
more than I have suffered," he said. "And now--I curse you. May
that treasure be the death of you. May you live in torture like
mine the rest of your days; may your beauty turn to ugliness such
that men will spit at you; may you never know peace again until
you die in poverty and want--"

But Dona Isabel, being superstitious, fled with her fingers in her
ears; nor did she undertake to make good her barbarous threat,
realizing opportunely that it would only serve to betray her
desperate intentions and put her husband further on his guard.
Instead she shut herself into her room, where she paced the floor,
racking her brain to guess where the hiding-place could be or to
devise some means of silencing Sebastian's tongue. To feel that
she had been overmatched, to know that there was indeed a
treasure, to think that the two who knew where it was had been
laughing at her all this time, filled the woman with an agony
approaching that which Sebastian suffered from his flies.

As the sun was sinking beyond the farther rim of the Yumuri and
the valley was beginning to fill with shadows. Esteban Varona rode
up the hill. His temper was more evil than ever, if that were
possible, for he had drunk again in an effort to drown the memory
of his earlier actions. With him rode half a dozen or more of his
friends, coming to dine and put in another night at his expense.
There were Pablo Peza, and Mario de Castano, once more; Col.