Maria kissed her mother's brow,ñaltaMartayMarí and gradually, taking care not to be noticed, she left the parlor by the dining-room door. She stopped to get a drink of _eau sucré_, and stood a moment motionless, with her eyes fixed on vacancy. The shade of melancholy had greatly dulled the brilliancy of her face.
She passed out of the dining-room and crossed a long and pretty dark entry. At the end there was a door which led to a back stairway. She had mounted only four or five steps when she felt herself seized roughly by the arm, and uttered a cry of terror. Turning round, she saw with embarrassment the pale and troubled face of her betrothed.
"I saw that you left the dining-room, and I followed you."
"To hear for a second time from your lips the infamous words you said to me in the drawing-room. Do you think, perhaps, it isn't worth while to repeat them? Do you think, perhaps, that I can give up a whole past of love, a whole future of happiness, all the sweet dreams of my life, without calling you infamous, a hundred times infamous, a thousand times infamous, now right here, while we are together alone, afterwards in open society, and then before the whole world? Come, come back, you miserable girl--come back, and let me call you so before everybody!"
And Ricardo, pale and trembling like a gambler who has staked his last remaining money on a card, firmly grasped his sweetheart by the wrist and tried to drag her back to the parlor.
Maria hung her head and said not a word. Without offering any resistance she allowed him to pull her down the four or five steps of the staircase. But on reaching the passage-way, Ricardo felt on his cheek a warm kiss, which caused him to loose his captive and fall back with horror; instantly Maria's arms were wound around his neck, and on his lips he felt the imprint of other lips.
"Ricardo mio, for heaven's sake, don't put me to shame!"
These words, whispered in his ear with a passionate accent, were accompanied by a cloud of caresses. The young man pressed her close to his heart without answering a word; his emotion choked his utterance. When he became a little calmer, he asked her with trembling voice,--
"Was that nothing else but a moment of ill humor?"