“True, true, my child,” I answered, “you are indeed a martyr, but it is to duty. Think of the season in Madrid that you will be able to share with your sisters—the theatres, the receptions, the dances! With your birth and the Count’s wealth you will certainly be received at Court, and what higher destiny could be offered to you than to take Pura and Dolores away from this dreary village into all the delights of the capital? Have courage, my noble girl, and crush the dictates of your heart for their sake, and, believe me, happiness will be yours.”
“True, Doña Elena; how beautiful an ideal you put before me! And I hear that Manolo has gone away and will not be back for six months, so what should I gain by refusing to marry the Count? And it would make a terrible scandal. And then, have you seen my wedding dress? It is too lovely for words! Do you know, it has a train two yards long! Cesar insisted; he says I am so little I must have a train to give me presence. I have never worn a long dress in my life, and I am so afraid I shall stumble over it. How dreadful if I made myself ridiculous in the church, before all Ronda! Doña Elena, did you have a train two yards long to your wedding dress, and did you find it difficult to manage?”
The melodrama was over, Carmencita was once more all smiles and merriment, and my suggestion that she should put the wedding dress on and practise walking up and down the patio in it for my benefit sent her and all her companions into screams of laughter. She had made her little oblation to the god of love, and now was ready to enjoy to the full the material fruits of her sacrifice.
She made me promise that I would come to her house and accompany the wedding party to the church, which is only a few yards from the ancestral home of the Campos Abandonados. I told her she had better let me efface myself in the back of the church, because I had no wedding garment in my suit-case and should do the party no credit.
“Don’t be absurd,” she retorted, kissing me affectionately. “You look like a Duchess with a black mantilla over your white hair, and if you haven’t got yours here, Mamma shall find one for you.”
Who could resist the pretty creature? And she meant every word of it, at any rate while she was speaking. But she really was sincere in her desire that I should be there as an intimate friend, not a mere acquaintance, and when I arrived shortly before two o’clock on the eventful afternoon I found little ten-year-old Lola, otherwise Dolores, waiting for me at the door, having been ordered by the bride to see that I was taken special care of, “because being a foreigner I might not know exactly where to go, and thus might fail to enjoy myself.”