"I should like to spend my life like this," he said in a sincere tone.

"Oh, you would soon get tired of it," returned Cecilia, smiling.

"Will you try me?"

The girl was silent.

"You are not, Cecilia, one of those women of whom one easily tires. You have treasures in your heart and mind that would always keep the man who loves you at your feet. You have had my heart for more than two years, and instead of wearying I feel myself more and more attached to you. I adore you more and more desperately, to the point of being the laughing-stock of the place."

"That is nonsense," she replied, albeit touched by the fire and feeling that Flores had given to his words. "It is not the same thing seeing a woman a little while now and again, and speaking to her of this and that, as having her continually with you."

"What should I like better, Cecilia, than to have you always with me!"

returned the engineer in a low, trembling voice, playing with the fan, with his eyes on the ground. "To consecrate my life to your service, and to adore you on my knees. I know that you would make any man happy, but no one as much as I, for I know the great qualities of your soul, and I divine secret feelings in your heart quite unknown to others. It is terrible that you will not give me the remotest hope that some day, distant as it may be, my love will conquer you, and you will accept me as a slave."

"I accept you as a friend, as a great friend," said the girl gravely.

"Friend, bah! This friendship, Cecilia, is a stone wall between you and me. I understand that I do not deserve to win your love--that there are a hundred young men in the town who could ask it with a better right; but what is so strange, and what encourages and discourages me at the same time, is that until now you have chosen n.o.body. Your heart remains empty and indifferent--that is to say, unless you have some hidden love."

Cecilia shivered slightly and raised her eyes a little to the place where the voice of Gonzalo was audible. Then she replied with more severity than usual:

"Cease studying my heart, Flores. In the first place, because it is most probably as commonplace as that of the majority of women, and in the second place, because, if there were something hidden in it, it would not be easy for you to discover it."

"Don't be offended, Cecilia. This study is only a proof of my interest in you."

"I am not offended," replied the girl, trying to smile. "I am going to speak to Rosario. Will you escort me to her?"

In the anteroom, only separated from the ballroom by a few pillars, the grave fathers were chatting and casting pleased looks to where their daughters were disporting themselves. Sometimes a masked lady detached herself from the dancing and came to rally them, and sometimes, being a contemporary, would make them laugh till they coughed, and then brought out some of their old stories.

Don Rosendo was chatting in a corner with Don Melchor de las Cuevas. He was laying before him one of his grand and magnificent projects of which the port was now the object. It is impossible to imagine how much more versed in knowledge Belinchon had become in the last few years, and, as with all great men, it was knowledge more intuitive than studied. At first, when he wrote for "The Light" on any subject of which he was ignorant, he was reticent, vacillating, and timid, but as he grew conversant with the topics of the day, and had at his command a quant.i.ty of hackneyed phrases, and, above all, when he possessed an encyclopedic dictionary in fifteen volumes, which did not cost him less than 2,000 reales, he tackled any point with tooth and nail. There was not a subject, or scientific, social, economic, and political problem, upon which Don Rosendo did not undertake to throw some light. If it was a question of the plague which was decimating the cattle, Don Rosendo sought in his dictionary for the words cattle, horse, bull, sheep, forage, live stock, etc., and as soon as he had read what was said on the subject he took up his pen, and his journalistic genius was brought to bear on the production of one or several articles pregnant with philosophy and erudition.

At the time the question of the port came up, he lost no time in looking in the dictionary for the words port, dockyard, tides, dredges, winds, etc. Seven consecutive articles were written and published to show the necessity of making a dockyard for Sarrio at a spot called Foril. He posed as a consummate seaman, used to navigating the seas and grown gray in the study of hydraulic problems. However, the Senor de las Cuevas, although less eloquent in such a vocabulary of maritime terms, some of which he did not even know, writhed at the wordy explanation given him by Don Rosendo, and ended by clapping him on the shoulder, and saying:

"You can disabuse your mind, Belinchon, about your dockyard. When the wind is in the northeast no sardines come in."

The one who enjoyed the entertainment most was an old man, the good Don Mateo, to whom it was entirely due. To him the ball represented one of the great triumphs of his life. It had cost him more trouble than enough to a.s.semble together the cantankerous townsfolk. He never stopped all the evening, going, or rather dragging himself, from place to place, giving orders to the servants, the wardens, and the orchestra.

"Gervasio, now for the plates of sweetmeats! Take one down each side, you fellows! What do you want, Senor Anselmo? Do the boys want a polka instead of a waltz? Then let them play a polka. Tell the young men that there are ladies in the dressing-room waiting for partners. Marcelino!

where has Marcelino got to? Go down to the porch, for some vagabond has thrown a stone at the lamp and broken it. But, Don Manuel, it is not more than two o'clock! You won't take away the girls yet, and the _pinata_ [Jack Horner basket] not yet broken."

The good gentleman was rejuvenated that evening. He shared the pleasure of the young people as mystics rejoice in a general communion. His dark eyes occasionally looked over his spectacles at the wooden globe hanging in the middle of the room, and he gave a chuckle of delight. The beautiful work of art from Bordeaux was painted with blue and white stripes, and there hung from beneath it a quant.i.ty of ribbons of various colors, all of which, with one exception, were held by young ladies ready to pull them, and the one who had the ribbon that opened the _pinata_ won the globe, which was doubtless filled with sweets, and, according to report, with very pretty knickknacks. Gonzalo, in the middle of the party, seemed also in good spirits, being sometimes with one lady, sometimes with another. He had danced a polka with his sister-in-law, and a polka and a waltz with two friends of his wife. His tall, colossal form rose like a tower above the heads of all.

"How cheerful you are, senor mayor!" said a lady of the lower middle cla.s.s.

"One has to profit by Ventura's absence," returned the young man with a laugh. "Where is your husband, Magdalena?"

"Oh, somewhere about."

"Come, dance this polka with me, and let us make hay while the sun shines."

"I can't. I am engaged to Pena for it."

While he was joking with those about him, a woman enveloped in a black domino, with a mask of the same hue, never lost sight of him for a moment, sometimes standing at one spot, sometimes at another, but always at a short distance from him, while her two shining, fiery eyes were visible through the holes of her mask. It was Dona Brigida, the ingenious wife of the spendthrift Morin, who was watching for the right moment, like the baritone in "Un Ballo in Maschera," to strike the blow.

The victim in that case was a prince, in this it was only a mayor. The reasons of the eminent lady for meditating this crime would not appear so weighty as those of the baritone in the eyes of a man, but they certainly would to any woman.

"The Light of Sarrio," in its anxiety to wound all members of the Cabin, with their relations and their friends, had for the last three or four months taken up Morin's wife as a theme. Thus all her domestic secrets were shown up: her married life, the dependence and degradation of Morin were caricatured, while all the anecdotes, more or less funny, that were the current talk of the town, appeared in print, with the addition of several others, discovered or invented by the malignant editors.

And as if this were not enough, there was not a number of the paper in question which did not make mention in some way or other of Dona Brigida's wig, which fact thus became public property in Sarrio. The anger, the rage, the hate, and the desire for revenge which all this aroused in the lady it is impossible to imagine. Suffice it to say that when she met one of the managers of "The Light" in the street she turned livid, and it was only by a great effort that she restrained herself from springing at his throat like a mad cat. Hitherto she had had no opportunity of satisfying this thirst for revenge with which she was consumed. But now, with Gonzalo before her eyes, she was filled with delight, she trembled with eagerness, like a tiger in sight of his prey.

Taking advantage of a moment during which n.o.body was speaking to him, she came closer behind him, and swiftly placing herself in front of him, she hissed, more than said:

"Gonzalo, why are you so stupid? You are the laughing-stock of everybody. There is not a person in the room who does not know that your wife is this moment with the Duke of Tornos."

The young man was stunned, as if he had received a blow on the forehead; he turned deadly pale, and then made as though he would tear off her mask; but that was impossible, for Dona Brigida had slipped away like an eel among the crowd, and as there were many ladies in the same costume, it was impossible to know which was the one he sought. Then Gonzalo quickly left the room, the words he had heard ringing in his head like hammer strokes. He feared he must fall. In the anteroom he replied with a stupid smile to the remarks made to him; and his uncle, Don Melchor, seeing him so pale, came up to him, and said:

"What is the matter, Gonzalo? Are you ill?"

"Yes; I am going to get a cup of tea."

"I'll go with you."

"No, no; I shall be back directly." And he ran off, leaving his uncle standing at the door.

He descended the staircase, and found himself in the street without knowing what he was doing. The fresh night air cooled his head and revived his memory. He suddenly determined to go to Tejada. He looked about for the carriage, but not seeing it, he thought Ramon had not left home yet. He looked at his watch; it was only half-past two. He took a few quick steps toward his father-in-law's house, when he recollected he had no hat or overcoat on. Returning to the Lyceum, he told the first servant he met in the hall to bring him down his hat and coat.

Arrived at the house, he found Ramon had already put the horse to the carriage.

"Ramon, drive me as fast as possible to Tejada at once."

The coachman looked at him in surprise.

"Is madame worse?"

"I think so," he replied, getting into the carriage. "But stop at the corner by the mill, you understand?"

"You are afraid of disturbing madame, eh?" queried the coachman with great astuteness. Gonzalo did not reply.

The horses went off at a trot, making the carriage jolt along the stony, uneven road of the town. Gonzalo did not notice how the movement shook every bone in his body, nor the change to the highroad on leaving the town. All his attention was concentrated on one point. Was it true, or was it not?

Strangely enough, without himself knowing why, the conviction that his wife had deceived him entered his soul and took possession of it. When he went to Tejada on foot, about two months before, he had not wished to harbor this conviction; however much he tried to convince himself that the insinuation of the paper was true, his head and his heart declined to admit the idea. Now it was quite different; he tried to think and to persuade himself that the accusation of the masked lady was only a vile exhibition of the envy and jealousy of some hidden enemy, and yet he could not believe it.

When the carriage stopped he had no idea of the time he had been driving; it might just as well have been a day as a minute. He awoke from his dream, and jumped out of the carriage.

"Now go back for the family," he said to Ramon; "and don't say you have brought me; there is no need to trouble them."

He then turned slowly toward the gate of the park some two hundred feet off, while the carriage went down an opposite road. Arrived at the gate, he pushed it with a trembling hand; it was open, like the previous time.

He felt a chill at his heart, which obliged him to stop. He finally entered cautiously, and looked up to see if the key were inside; but it was not there. The night was neither clear nor dark; the sky was overcast, and a fine rain was falling which penetrated to the skin. It made no sound as it fell upon the trees and bushes of the park, but when disturbed by a gust of wind a quant.i.ty of drops came down in a regular gust, which made a quick, pa.s.sing, ringing sound on the ground.

Gonzalo suddenly recollected that he had no weapon with him; but then he shrugged his shoulders in scorn born of the absolute confidence that in the case of necessity he would not be found wanting. He looked about on all sides to see if he could see the duke's horse, but instead of seeing it he caught sight of the shadow of a man disappearing among the trees; so he ran after him, but he quickly vanished.