“Yes, do you love me? You were to give me an answer here, in Seville, and now I ask for it. I have almost taught myself to think that it is needless to ask; and now this horrid mischance——”
“What do you mean?” said she, speaking very quickly, “Why this miserable blunder about the marquis’s button! After that I suppose——”
“The marquis! Oh, John, is that to make a difference between you and me?—a little joke like that?”
“But does it not?”
“Make a change between us!—such a thing as that! Oh, John!”
“But tell me, Maria, what am I to hope? If you will say that you can love me, I shall care nothing for the marquis. In that case I can bear to be laughed at.”
“Who will dare to laugh at you? Not the marquis, whom I am sure you will like.”
“Your friend in the plaza, who told you of all this.”
“What, poor Tomàs!”
“I do not know about his being poor. I mean the gentleman who was with you last night.”