"Love you!"

"Yes, do you love me? You were to give me an answer here, in Seville, and now I ask for it. I have almost taught myself to think that it is needless to ask; and now this horrid mischance--"

"What do you mean?" said she, speaking very quickly.

"Why this miserable blunder about the marquis's b.u.t.ton! After that I suppose--"

"The marquis! Oh, John, is that to make a difference between you and me?--a little joke like that?"

"But does it not?"

"Make a change between us!--such a thing as that! Oh, John!"

"But tell me, Maria, what am I to hope? If you will say that you can love me, I shall care nothing for the marquis. In that case I can bear to be laughed at."

"Who will dare to laugh at you? Not the marquis, whom I am sure you will like."

"Your friend in this plaza, who told you of all this."

"What, poor Tomas!"

"I do not know about his being poor. I mean the gentleman who was with you last night."

"Yes, Tomas. You do not know who he is?"

"Not in the least."

"How droll! He is your own clerk--partly your own, now that you are one of the firm. And, John, I mean to make you do something for him; he is such a good fellow; and last year he married a young girl whom I love--oh, almost like a sister."

Do something for him! Of course I would. I promised, then and there, that I would raise his salary to any conceivable amount that a Spanish clerk could desire; which promise I have since kept, if not absolutely to the letter, at any rate, to an extent which has been considered satisfactory by the gentleman's wife.

"But, Maria--dearest Maria--"

"Remember, John, we are in the church; and poor papa will be waiting breakfast."

I need hardly continue the story further. It will be known to all that my love-suit throve in spite of my unfortunate raid on the b.u.t.ton of the Marquis D'Almavivas, at whose series of fetes through that month I was, I may boast, an honoured guest. I have since that had the pleasure of entertaining him in my own poor house in England, and one of our boys bears his Christian name.

From that day in which I ascended the Giralda to this present day in which I write, I have never once had occasion to complain of a deficiency of romance either in Maria Daguilar or in Maria Pomfret.