“I wager she would be strong enough, strong enough, if I offered to let her go to the Casino!”
“Ah, Periquillo of my soul!” cried the sick girl, whose fine ear had not lost a word of the conversation, “will you let me go, eh? What harm would that do me? Miranda, you intercede for me.”
“Once in a while--it might be good for her--it would serve to distract her.”
“Don’t mind what he says, Gonzalvo. Señor Duhamel says she ought not to go, and who knows best, she or the doctor?” said Lucía.
“And you?” asked Perico, incited to a touch of gallantry by the hour, the sight of the husband walking in front, and his inveterate habits,--“and you, young and pretty as you are, why do you not come to the Casino? All that finery that is lying idle in your trunks would be better employed where it could be seen. Come, make up your mind, make up your mind, and I will bring you a bunch of camellias like the one the Swede carried last night.”
“I have no desire to eclipse the Swede,” said Lucía, with a smile. “Where would she be if I were to show myself?”
“Well, although you say it in jest, in jest, it is the simple truth,” and Perico traitorously lowered his voice. “You are worth a dozen Swedes”; and in a louder tone, he added: “If Juanito Albares did not make such a fool of himself, deuce a one would look at her, would look at her.”
(Juanito Albares, as Perico familiarly called him, was a duke, a grandee of Spain, a count and a marquis, and had I know not how many other titles besides, a fact worthy to be borne in mind by the future biographers of the elegant Gonzalvo.)
“Where are your eyes, then?” exclaimed Lucía, with Spanish frankness. “You have great audacity to say that! The Swede is beautiful! Her complexion is whiter than milk, and then her eyes----”
“Put no confidence in whiteness,” interposed Pilar, “while Venus’s towel and Paris white are to be bought. She is too large.”
“Too tall,” declared Perico, like the fox in the fable.
“Never mind,” said Miranda, in a low voice, to Pilar. “We will make that obstinate brother of yours listen to reason, and you shall go some night to the Casino. A pretty thing it would be if you were to leave Vichy without seeing the theater and listening to the concert. It would be unheard of.”