“Stay.”

“Then you must be as loving and tender as you were before.”

“Alas!  I promised to commit that sin no more.  I tell you to stay, because I am sure that in eight or ten days we shall have become so accustomed to one another that I shall be able to love you like a father, and you will be able to take me in your arms without any amorous sentiments.”

“Are you sure of this?”

“Yes, dearest, quite sure.”

“You make a mistake.”

“Let me be mistaken, and believe me I shall be glad to be mistaken.”

“Unhappy devotee!”

“Why unhappy?”

“Nothing, nothing.  I may be too long, I shall endanger . . . let us say no more about it.  I will stay.”

I went out more pained with her state than my own, and I felt that the best thing I could do would be to forget her, “for,” said I to myself, “even if I do enjoy her once, Sunday will come again; she will confess, repent, and I shall have to begin all over again.  She confessed her love, and flatters herself that she will be able to subdue it—­a foolish hope, which could only exist in a mind under the dominion of prejudice.”

I came home at noon, and Don Diego dined with me; his daughter did not appear till the dessert.  I begged her to sit down, politely, but coldly.  Her father asked her jestingly if I had paid her a visit in the night.

“I never suspected Don Jaime of such a thing,” she replied, “and I only objected out of shyness.”

I interrupted her by praising her modesty, and telling her that she would have done quite right to beware of me, if my sense of duty had not been stronger than any voluptuous desires inspired by her charms.

Don Diego pronounced this declaration of love as good as anything to be found in the “Morte d’Arthur.”

His daughter said I was laughing at her, but Don Diego said he was certain that I was in earnest, and that I had known her before taking her to the ball.

“You are utterly mistaken,” said Donna Ignazia, with some degree of fire.

“Your father is wiser than you, senora,” I replied.

“What!  How and when did you see me?”

“At the church where I heard mass, and you communicated, when you went out with your cousin.  I followed you at some distance; you can guess the rest.”

She was speechless, and her father enjoyed the consciousness of his superior intellect.

“I am going to see the bull fight,” said he; “it’s a fine day, and all Madrid will be there, so one must go early to get a good place.  I advise you to go, as you have never seen a bull fight; ask Don Jaime to take you with him, Ignazia.”

“Would you like to have my companionship?” said she, tenderly.

“Certainly I would, but you must bring your cousin, as I am in love with her.”

Don Diego burst out laughing, but Ignazia said, slyly,

“It is not so impossible after all.”