"That would not matter in the least. It is the persecution which jars on my nerves. He is just such a boy as would be capable out of mere spite, if he detected me entering this house, of writing an anonymous letter. And you know the peculiar position in which I stand with regard to my husband."
"There is not a chance of it. Those who write anonymous notes are not admirers, but envious women. Shall I meet him face to face and give him a fright?"
"How can you ask such a question!" exclaimed Clementina, indignantly. "Listen Pepe, you are a man of feeling, and have plenty of intelligence, but you sadly lack a little more delicacy to enable you to understand certain things. You should give rather less time to your club and your horses, and cultivate your mind a little."
"Is that your opinion?" cried Pepe, angered extremely by this reproof.
"Well, if you wish that I should not tell you such things, there are others which you should not say."
Pepe Castro shrugged his shoulders scornfully, and rose from his chair. He paced the room two or three times with an air of abstraction, and stopped at last in front of a little picture which he took down to dust it with his handkerchief. Clementina watched him with anger in her eyes. She suddenly started to her feet as if moved by a spring; but then, controlling her petulance, she quietly went into the adjoining room, took her hat off the bed, and began to put it on in front of a looking-glass, very deliberately, though the slight trembling of her hands still betrayed the annoyance she was repressing.
"There," she presently exclaimed, in a tone of indifference, "I am going. Do you want anything out?"
The young man turned round, and exclaimed with surprise: "Already!"
"Already," replied she with affected determination.
Castro went up to her, put his arm round her neck, and raising the red veil with the other hand, kissed her on the temple.