"Why? If I have hurt his feelings it is his own fault."
"So I told him. But I believe his complaint is in a fair way to be cured, and that he will not again expose himself to your thrusts. He has been more cheerful and less absent-minded these last few days."
Castro was quite honestly doing his best for his friend.
"I should be only too glad to hear it," said the girl, with perfect simplicity.
Castro sang the praises of his friend and earnestly recommended him to Esperancita's good graces. But as he poured exaggerated eulogies into the girl's ear, his tone of disdain and the satirical smile which accompanied them somewhat weakened their effect. And even if it had not been so, she would have received them with no less hostility.
"Come, Pepe, you want to make a fool of me?"
"Indeed, Esperancita, Ramon has a great future before him, and in time may very likely be made Minister."
The hero in question, meanwhile, was explaining, with his usual fluency, to Mariana and her mother, how he had discovered an extensive fraud in the custom-house returns on imported meat: three hundred and fifty hams had been brought into the country, a few days since, smuggled in with the cognisance of some of the officials. Ramoncito meant to bring these men to justice without delay. Mariana implored him not to be too severe with them; they were perhaps fathers of families, but she could not mollify him. His sense of municipal rights was more rigid perhaps than the muscles of his neck—to judge by the number of times he turned his head to look where Pepe and Esperancita were talking. He was not jealous; he had absolute confidence in his friend's loyalty; but he wanted his beloved to hear him when he brought out certain phrases: "To the bar of justice;" "I can no doubt obtain an adverse verdict;" "The municipal law requires that they should be prosecuted," and so forth, so that the angel of his heart might fully appreciate the high destiny in store for her if she were united to so energetic an administrator.
They now heard steps in the adjoining room, and a cough which they all knew only too well. Doña Esperanza when she heard it hastily handed her work to her daughter, or, to be exact, crammed it into Mariana's hands.
When Calderón came in, his wife was stitching with affected diligence, while her mother was sitting with her hands folded, as if she had not stirred from her attitude for a long time. Ramon and Castro had scarcely noticed the manœuvre. The reason of it was that Calderón could not forgive his wife her apathy and indolence, regarding these faults as positive calamities, and himself as most unfortunate for having married so inert a woman. Not that any work she might do mattered in the household; but his vehemently laborious temperament asserted itself against one so diametrically opposed to it. Mariana's limpness and indifference irritated his nerves and gave rise to sharp discussions and frequent squabbles. She feebly defended herself, declaring that her parents had not brought her up to be a maid-of-all-work, since they had enough to allow her to live like a lady. Whereupon Don Julian would turn furious, and declare that it was the duty of every one to work, or at any rate to do something; that total idleness was incomprehensible; that it was a wife's duty to see that the property of the household was not wasted, even if she could not add to it, &c. &c. And, finally, that the mistress's incurable indolence was at the bottom of their domestic discomfort.