One after another all the couples took the floor. Marta remained sitting. Two or three very complaisant and patronizing young fellows came to invite her, but she replied that she did not know how to dance.

The real motive of her refusal was that her father did not like to have her take part in society while she was so young. She sat, therefore, attentively watching how the others went round. Her great black eyes rested with placid expression on each one of the couples who went up and down before her. Some interested her more than others, and she followed them with her glance. Their ways, their movements, and their looks were so different, that they made a curious study. A tall, lean youth was bending his back as near double as possible, so as to put his arm around the waist of a diminutive senorita who was endeavoring to keep on her very tip-toes. An elderly and portly lady was leaning languidly over a boy's shoulder, besmearing his coat with Matilde Diez's wax-white. Some, like Isidorito, did not succeed in steering, and frequently stepped on their partners, who soon declared that they were weary and asked to be excused. Others put down their heels with such force that they scratched the floor. Marta looked at these with considerable severity, like a true housewife. After a while the faces began to show signs of weariness, some becoming flushed, others pallid, according to the temperament of each. With mouths open, cheeks aglow, and brows bathed in perspiration, they gave evidence of no other expression than that of absolute stupidity. At first they smiled and even dropped from their lips a compliment or two; but very soon gallantries ceased, and the smile faded away; all ended by skipping about silent and solemn, as if some unseen hand were laying on the lash in order to make them do so. Marta from time to time shut her eyes, and thus she avoided the dizziness which began to attack her.

At last the piano suddenly ceased to sound. The couples, in virtue of the momentum which they had acquired, gave three or four hops unaccompanied by the music, and this made Marta smile. Before they took their seats the girls walked around the drawing-room for a few moments arm in arm with their partners, engaged in lively and interesting discourse. The pianist accepted the effusive thanks of the smart young man with the bangs. At length the ladies were all seated in their respective places, and the gentlemen fell back once again to the doors, mopping their brows with their handkerchiefs. Those who had danced with the beauties of the drawing-room showed faces shining with beat.i.tude, and smilingly received the jests of their friends, while those who had pressed the less favored to their bosoms, praised to the skies their partners' Terpsich.o.r.ean skill.

The youth with the hair over his forehead conceived the idea of Don Serapio singing a song, and he went from group to group around the room, making an instantaneous and satisfactory propaganda with his happy thought.

"Yes, yes, Don Serapio must sing!"

"Don Serapio must sing! Don Serapio must sing!"

"Gentlemen, for Heaven's sake--I have a very bad cold!"

"No matter; you will sing well enough, Don Serapio."

"A thousand thanks, ladies, a thousand thanks. I should wish at this moment that I had the voice of an angel, for angels only ought to sing to angels."

This compliment produced an excellent impression upon the feminine element of the company. The masculine element received it with derisive smiles.

"We always enjoy great pleasure in listening to you; you know it very well."

"Because generosity ever goes in company with beauty. The face is the mirror of the soul, they say, and if that is true, how could you help being benevolent toward me?"

The second compliment was likewise received with a laugh of complacency by the ladies. The men continued to smile scornfully.

"Sing, sing, Don Serapio!"

"But supposing I am not in practice--I don't know how I can repay such kindness. Besides, I have lost my voice entirely."

Don Serapio let himself be urged for some time. At last he went toward the piano, escorted by a circle of ladies, to whom he addressed smiles and words full of honeyed sweetness, and managed to extract clandestinely a roll of music which he carried in the inner pocket of his coat. The pianist instantly saw through this manuvre, and came to his a.s.sistance by quietly taking the music from his hand.

"Don Serapio is going to sing--you are going to sing the romance _Lontano a te_," he said as he spread it out on the rack.

"Oh, for Heaven's sake! it is too sentimental, and these ladies are not now in favor of romanticism--"

"On the contrary, Don Serapio!" exclaimed one of the Delgado girls; "we women in this age of selfishness and calculation are the very ones who ought to worship sentiment and heart."

"Always as graceful as you are felicitous!" declared the vocalist, bowing to the floor.

The pianoforte introduction began. Don Serapio, before he uttered a note, kept arching his eyebrows, and he stretched his neck as much as possible, as a token of his feeling. He was upwards of fifty, although pomades, dyes, and cosmetics gave him from a distance the appearance of a young man. Near at hand, his mustachios, though waxed to perfection, were not sufficient to make up for the crows'-feet and wrinkles of every sort which lined his face. He was a manufacturer of canned goods, and a confirmed old bachelor; not because he failed to honor the fair s.e.x and hold it in esteem, but because he thought that marriage was death to love and its illusions. Never was there a man more soft and honeyed in his conversation with ladies, and never was there a gallant who had a more abundant a.s.sortment of flatteries to lavish upon them. He made great use of such expressions as _the fire of pa.s.sion_, _the loss of will power_, _perfumed breath_, _palpitations of the heart_, and other like elegancies, all sure of hitting the mark. This was as regards society women. As for work-girls and serving-maids, Don Serapio's gallantries did not stop with compliments. He was regarded as one of the most formidable and successful of seducers among such, and it was a matter of common knowledge in Nieva that more than one, and more than two, had had seriously to complain of his behavior, so that it brought about his head a tremendous scandal which he had hastened to hush with the fulness of his locker. As a general thing he led a regular life, rising very early, going to his factory to attend to his accounts and to inspect the spicing of his fish and oysters, and coming home about five o'clock in the afternoon to wash himself and dress for his promenade or his calls, which were not few, and which always ended at eleven o'clock in the evening. The only reading for which he cared was that of detective stories.

Don Serapio's voice was a trifle disagreeable. As one of the young wags among those cl.u.s.tering about the door said, no one could tell for a certainty if it were tenor, baritone, or ba.s.s. In compensation, he sang with sentiment fit to melt the rocks, as could be judged by the infinite movements of his eyebrows, and by the expression of disconsolateness which came over his face as soon as he stood in front of the piano; no one ever saw a face so wrinkled, so long drawn, so full of compunction.

The romanza _Lontano a te_, better than any other, had the power of exciting his sensibility and giving his eyes an exceedingly hopeless expression.

While the proprietor of the canning factory was expressing in Italian his grief at finding himself far from his lady love, the elder daughter of the family was in the most retired part of the room still engaged in conversation with a youth of a pleasant, open countenance, with swarthy complexion, black eyes, and a young mustache.

"Enrique misunderstood my commission," said the youth. "I asked him to send me some jewelry worth something, but what he sent me is just about as commonplace as could be; so much so that I am thinking of sending it back to-morrow without showing it to you."

"Don't trouble about it any more; it's all the same one way or the other."

"What do you mean, 'all the same'? Since when, senorita, have you grown so indifferent to matters of the toilet? I am certain that if I were to bring you this jewelry, you would laugh me to scorn."

"Don't imagine such a thing."

"Perhaps you think I don't remember how you made fun of that hat that your aunt Carmen presented you a few days ago!"

"It was very wrong of me to make fun of it; but you are just as bad when you throw it in my face. The truth is that in the end one hat or one set of jewelry is as good as another."

"Be it so! Keep it up! I know you well, and you can't cheat me. The jewelry shall be sent back, and in its place we'll have another set to my taste and yours. But let's drop the subject. I had something to tell you, and I can't remember what it was. Oh, yes! we must write to your uncle Rodrigo, for judging by the note I have just received from him, he doesn't know yet the day on which we are to be married. I think we ought to write him both of us in the same letter; doesn't it seem so to you?"

"Just as you like."

"All right; I'll come round to-morrow before dinner, and we'll write it."

Both remained silent a few moments and listened to the singing of Don Serapio, who was lamenting always with a more and more pathetic accent the solitude and sadness in which his mistress kept him. One of the Delgado senoritas lifted her handkerchief to her eyes, declaring in a low voice to those standing near that hitherto there had been few things that ever brought the tears into her eyes.

"What a bore that wretched Don Serapio is! he wrinkles up his forehead so that his wig is almost lifted off behind."

"Don't be so unkind. Have a little charity, and let the poor man enjoy himself without harming G.o.d or his neighbor."

"As far as I am concerned he may sing till doomsday. But I notice, la.s.sie, that for some time you have been becoming a great preacher. Are you thinking of entering into compet.i.tion with the cure of the parish?"

"What I am anxious for is that you shouldn't be a backbiter. If you love me as you say you do, my good advice ought not to make you vexed."

"It doesn't make me vexed, loveliest; quite the contrary. I always listen to it with pleasure and follow it--when I can. You surely are acquainted with my ways, and know that I can't help making fun. However, you'll have time enough to preach to me all you want, won't you? Not only time enough but s.p.a.ce enough. You can go on giving me sermons from Nieva to Madrid, then from Madrid to Paris, and from Paris to Milan, and from Milan to Venice, and thence to Rome and Naples, and back by Geneva, Brussels, Paris, and Madrid, home again. With what delight I shall travel through all these foreign countries listening to a preacher so devoted! How do you like the itinerary of our journey?"

"Well enough."

"Well enough! That isn't saying anything. One would think the subject didn't interest you as much as it did me. I won't fix it definitely till you have made such changes as you like in it, or vary it entirely, if it seem good to you. I am just as much interested in going to Berlin or London as to Paris and Rome. You can imagine how much difference it makes to me, if I go with you, which way we travel!"

"Whatever you decide upon will be well."

"Let us have it decided. Do you like the plan I propose? Yes or no?"

"I have told you yes already."

"But, la.s.sie, what is the matter with you? You have scarcely allowed yourself to smile this whole evening, and you haven't said a word more than was strictly necessary. What is the reason of such solemnity? Are you put out with me?"

"What reason should I have to be?"

"Then I'll ask you _why_ you are. You must be, since there's no other way of explaining the curt way in which you have been answering me this long time."

"That's your own imagination. I answer you just as I always do."

Ricardo, without speaking, looked at his betrothed, who turned away her eyes, fixing them on Don Serapio.

"It must be so, but I don't understand it. If you are really angry with me, it would be very unkind of you not to tell me why, so that I could repair my mistake, if perchance I had committed any. My conscience does not accuse me of anything--"

"I tell you that I am not angry; don't be so tiresome!"