"Pah!" he exclaimed, looking at the dancer, "your neck is dirty again."
Sick with disgust, his blood racing with a passionate detestation, Charles Abbott laughed loudly. But he was relieved that Santacilla's attention had been shifted from him. Another officer, a major of the Isabel regiment, tall and dark and melancholy, joined them. He ignored Charles completely, and talked to La Clavel about her dances--the Arragonese jota and those of the other provinces of Spain. He had, it developed, written an opera on the subject of de Gama and a fabulous Florida. Santacilla grew restive at this and gazed about the room maliciously. Then, suddenly, he rose and walked to the table where a young Cuban exquisite was sitting with a girl slender and darkly lovely. Santacilla leaned over, with his hands planted on their table, and made a remark that drove the blood in a scarlet tide to the civilian's face. Then the Spaniard amazingly produced from his sleeve a ball of lamb's wool such as women use to powder their faces, and touched the girl's nose lightly. He went to another table and repeated his act, to another and another, brushing all the feminine noses, and returned, unchallenged, to his place.
"If I had been with any of those women," he related comfortably, "and the King had done that, there would have been a new king and a new infanta."
The musical Spaniard, inappropriately in uniform, remonstrated, "A lot of them will kill you some night in the Paseo de Valdez or on the quays."
Santacilla agreed with him. "No doubt it will overtake me--if not here, then on the Peninsula. A hundred deaths, all distressing, have been sworn upon me." Charles Abbott's expression was inane, but, correcting that statement, he said to himself, "A hundred and one."
La Clavel yawned, opening to their fullest extent her lips on superb teeth and a healthy throat.
"I have, at least, a sponge, a basin of water," she proclaimed indirectly.
Santacilla replied, "You think nothing can cleanse me, and, in your chattering way, you are right; except, it may be, that last twist of steel or ounce of lead. Some of my soldiers are planning to manage it; I know them well, and I gave one an opportunity today: I stood with my back to him in the parapet of the Twelve Apostles for three, five, minutes, while he tramped and fiddled with his musket, and then I put him in a hole in the stone for a year."