The duke had talked of sending the portrait to the Salon in Paris. While Ventura read the paper he kept his eyes fixed upon her face with breathless attention, but she did not waver under his gaze; she only grew a little pale as she read the last lines and returned him the paper.

"Why did you ask me to read that? I don't understand."

"Well, I will explain it to you," returned Gonzalo, accentuating each syllable in suppressed rage. "I asked you to read this because the mandarin mentioned in it is the Duke of Tornos, you are the Chinese lady, and I am the Chinaman--do you understand now?"

At these words he glared at his wife in a terrible way, and crushed up in his hand a bough of a plant that was standing beside him.

Ventura met the look without wincing, and seemed more surprised than alarmed; she hesitated for an instant, while her lips moved to reply, and she ended by bursting into a loud laugh.

"_Ave Maria!_ what an atrocity!"

"I am in earnest, Ventura," returned the young man; "this that excites your derision is a very serious matter, and your happiness and mine are at stake."

Ventura only replied by another peal of laughter, and another, until she bubbled over with laughter, but Gonzalo was not blind to the affectation of her merriment.

"Take care, Ventura, take care," he said with his face fraught with fury; "recollect I am speaking seriously now."

"But, my dear fellow--ha! ha!--do you expect me not to laugh when you tell me--ha! ha!--that you are a Chinaman and I am a Chinese lady?--ha!

ha! ha!" and her laughter grew more affected every minute.

"It is now some days since I ought to have put matters straight,"

continued the husband, gloomily, after a pause. "This unwarranted, inconvenient, stupid, familiar att.i.tude that you take with the duke before people irritated me exceedingly--but I wasn't going to expose myself to ridicule by saying so. Jealous men always look ridiculous--but you see what has happened by my being too remiss."

So saying, he broke off the branch he was clutching and crushed it in his hand.

"But you are really jealous now, are you not?" she asked in tones of mingled cajolery and endearment.

"If I were, I should be silent, Ventura--I should be silent and watchful; and if my jealousy were well grounded--I learned what to do before the priest read me Saint Paul's epistles. But there is no question of jealousy here; the age and position of the duke preclude it, and I don't insult you by supposing you prefer him to me. The point is, the ridicule which your imprudence has brought upon me. You don't see, you stupid girl, that we have the eye of the public upon us; that we have lots of enemies, and that they seize the smallest pretext to attack us."

"Well, you acknowledge it is only a pretext to annoy you."

"Yes; but it is founded on your inherent vanity, which I have never been able to break you of."

"Let us understand each other, Gonzalo. What have I done?" she asked in an injured tone.

The young man was silent as he looked at her sternly. Then after some minutes he said slowly:

"You know too well. Repeating it degrades me."

There was another pause of silence, and then Ventura said somewhat impatiently:

"Well, what do you want?"

"I am going to tell you," returned the young man, restraining himself with difficulty. "I want this objectionable friendship to cease, as you see it is most derogatory to me. I want you not to think any more of the Duke of Tornos, nor to take any notice of his suave smile nor of his generally compromising flirting manners. I want to resume the calm tenor of our lives, such as it was before his arrival; and as that is my wish, I intend to have it done at all costs."

He was silent for a minute, and then, with a vehemence beyond what the occasion required, he added:

"This very day the duke shall leave the house."

Ventura looked at him in amazement. She turned suddenly livid, and with her lips trembling with rage she exclaimed:

"What do you mean? You will have to be taken to Leganes. Come, come,"

she added in a more conciliatory tone, "do me the kindness to leave me in peace, and go and calm yourself, for you really require it."

Gonzalo's face then became distorted with fury, his lips wreathed with fierce sarcasm, and his eyes flamed.

"Ah!" he roared, more than said, "take the friendship of this rake, for he is a rake, and all Spain knows it; you think more of it than of your husband's happiness; but don't think for an instant that because I am not a duke and a grandee that I don't know how to protect my honor! Look here! Look here! This is the respect that I have for the duke."

And at these words he gave the picture a kick which leveled it to the ground with a great noise. Then he seized hold of it, with his teeth set, his eyes bloodshot, and a prey to one of those paroxysms of rage to which powerful phlegmatic people are sometimes subject. The canvas was soon in pieces; and Ventura, utterly dumfounded, but with the daring of a spoiled woman, gasped out:

"Brute! Brute!"

The tone of this insult was so fierce with rage that Gonzalo raised his head as if he had been struck with a red-hot iron; and springing upon her, he seized her by the arm. The girl uttered a cry of agony--her husband's hand held her with a steel-like grip that went to the very bone.

"Forgive her, Gonzalo, forgive her!" exclaimed Dona Paula, intervening.

The infuriated man turned his head without loosening his hold of his wife. At the sight of his mother-in-law, in whose face, now convulsed with terror, illness had made such cruel ravages, gazing at him with imploring eyes and hands clasped in entreaty, his hand let go of Ventura and fell to his side.

He had no time to say anything. Dona Paula, without looking at her daughter, dragged him by the coat-sleeve, saying:

"Come, my son, come; I will settle this matter, and calm you down."

And Gonzalo, overwhelmed with shame, let himself be taken away like an automaton. On reaching her room the good lady locked the door.

"I heard all," she said, as she fixed upon him her large, dark eyes, as sad as those of a Dolorosa, the last remnant of her beauty. "I saw you cross the pa.s.sage, looking so strange that I couldn't help following you. I don't know what it says in this paper that you have given Venturita, but it must be something very repulsive and objectionable."

"The greatest insult that a man can have!" returned Gonzalo in a stifled tone.

"How infamous! Insult you, who have never hurt them! You are right. It is Ventura's fault: her frivolity and the silly ideas that she gets into her head have caused this trouble, as they have caused other slighter ones that you have had. But do not imagine for an instant that there is anything bad about Ventura. She is a giddy creature, a little flirt, but she is not bad at heart; she will improve with time. I, also, have had my share of pride, and committed fooleries that put me to shame to think of now! Oh, years, sadness, and sickness take all the nonsense out of one! The thing now is to prevent any worse consequences. I have noticed for some time the duke's attentions, and the intimacy which has sprung up between them. I know quite well that there is nothing in it; I am as certain of my daughter as you must be; but I can quite understand that the conduct of this man is annoying to you. Moreover, when a paper takes the opportunity of insulting you, it is time matters were put on another footing; some step must be taken."

"It is come to this," said Gonzalo moodily, "I send the duke out of the house this very day."

"No, you can not and must not do so; you are quick-tempered, and there would be a violent scene, which must be avoided."

"But it is precisely this scene that I want!"

"Don't be childish, Gonzalo," replied the lady. "It is for me to settle this matter, because Rosendo neither sees, hears, nor understands anything beyond politics. A scandal just now would make you ridiculous."

"Never mind!" exclaimed the young man in a rage. "I want the pleasure of kicking him out of the house."

"You force me to say, then, Gonzalo," returned Dona Paula in a tone of impatience tinged with authority, "that you have no right to do so. It was not you who invited him, neither are you the master of the house."

The young man colored deeply; and noting his confusion the lady added, in an affectionate tone:

"You are our son, and sons do not interfere in the affairs of their parents. It is they who have the duty of watching over their happiness and sacrificing themselves for it. I will see that the duke leaves the house without any scandal, and without any one suspecting the reason, or your doing anything which you would regret afterward. Don't think that I do it for his sake, for I detest him. From the moment the man arrived he filled me with the greatest repulsion. Now that I see what he has brought upon our family, you can imagine how I dislike him. I only do it for your sake, because I love you, I will not say any more than my daughter--because one's children, oh! one's children! you know what they are--but, at least as much, and I esteem you much higher."

Gonzalo, quite overcome, dropped into a chair, and began sobbing like a child, with his face in his hands. The good lady placed her thin, white hand on his head, and, with tears in her eyes, she said: