In the drawing-room Pepe found only the girls, busy with their needlework. Their mother, they said, was in the study, writing letters. So, after exchanging a few words with his cousins, he joined her there.
"May I come in, aunt?"
"Come in, come in. You, Pepe?" said the Marquesa, looking up at him over the spectacles she wore for writing.
"If I am interrupting you I will go away. I want to consult you," said the young man, with a smile.
He took a chair, and while his aunt went on writing with a firm, swift hand, he meditated the exordium to the speech he was about to deliver. At last the pen dashed across the paper with a strident squeak, no doubt emphasising the writer's signature, and taking off her spectacles, she said:
"At your service, Pepe."
Pepe looked at the floor, praying no doubt for inspiration, twirled his moustache, cleared his throat and at last began with much solemnity.
"Well, aunt, I do not know whether it is that God has touched my heart, or merely that I am weary of my present mode of life; but at any rate for some time past I have been taking to heart the advice you have so often given me, and which goes hand in hand with my own wish to settle down, to give up the bad habits which I have contracted for want of a father to guide me, and yet more of a mother, like yourself. I am very nearly thirty, and it is time to think of the name I bear. I owe a duty to that, and to my calling as a Christian; for in all my excesses I have never forgotten that I belong to an old Catholic family, and that nowadays in Spain it is incumbent on our class to protect the cause of religion and set a good example, as you do. The means I look to as an encouragement to the change I feel within me is marriage."
The penitent could not have chosen his words better in addressing his aunt Eugenia. They made so good an impression that she rose from her place and came to lay a hand on his shoulder, exclaiming:
"You delight me, Pepito. You cannot imagine what pleasure you give me. And you say you do not know whether God has touched your heart! How could you have undergone this sudden change, if He had not inspired it? It is the touch of God, indeed, my boy, the finger of God—and the noble blood which runs in your veins. Have you chosen a wife?"