Choose." She spoke like a man to those who would have murdered her and had failed, but who had robbed her with impunity for years.

Gregorio Macomer's face was all distorted.

All at once his maniac laugh broke out.

But it stopped suddenly and unexpectedly, and it changed to another sort of laughter--low and not unpleasant to hear, but a little vacant.
Matilde turned her head slowly and gazed at him.

He was bending now and resting his elbows on the head of the couch, instead of his hands, and he held his hands themselves opposite to each other, crooking first one finger and then another, and making one finger bow to the other, as children sometimes do, and laughing vacantly to himself, with a queer little chuckle of enjoyment.