"Come, come, friend Fuentes," said the pretty brunette, casting an insinuating glance at Castro, for she had taken it into her head that she would snatch him from Clementina, "are you trying to chaff me?"
"Chaff, what is chaff?" the Baroness de Rag asked again.
Bonifacio had for some moments been staring, without winking even, at the Belgian lady. A few days since he had purchased a photograph of a figure lounging in a hammock. He fancied that the Baroness strongly resembled this picture, and was anxious to convince himself by a prolonged study of what he could see whether what he could not see was equally like it.
The dinner could not end of course without a long discussion of the opera, Gayarre and Tosti. Otherwise the meal could not have been digested. The coffee was served in the dining-room, as was the custom of the house. Then the ladies withdrew to the drawing-room, followed by several of the men; others remained to smoke, but it was not long before they joined the others. The dining-room was intolerably hot.
Pepe Castro took advantage of the little stir as they left the dining-room to ask Clementina:
"Why did you not come this morning?"
Clementina paused a second, and looked at him with a condescending smile. "This morning?" she said. "I don't know."
"You don't know?" said the lordly youth with a sovereign frown.
"I don't know, I don't know," and she turned away still smiling a little disdainfully.
"You will come to-morrow?"