"Very well; bring me my muff."
Castro flew to obey. Clementina, when she had it in her hands, sat down on the sofa with an affectation of calm, and flourishing it in the air, she exclaimed: "Now you will not guess what I have in this muff?"
Her eyes were bright with glee and pride at the same time. Castro's sparkled with anxiety; the colour mounted to his cheeks, and he replied in a tone between assertion and inquiry:
"Fifteen thousand pesetas."[C]
The lady's triumphant expression instantly changed to one of wrath and disgust.
"Go—go away—Pig!" she furiously cried, giving him a hard box on the ear with the handsome muff. "You think of nothing but money. You have not a grain of delicacy."
"I thought——" The change in Pepe's face was no less marked; it was more gloomy than night.
"Of money, yes; I tell you so. Well then, no. Nothing of the kind. Nothing but a little tie-pin, which—fool that I am—I bought at Marbini's as I came along, to show you that I am always thinking of you."
"And I thank you from the bottom of my heart, my sweet pigeon," said the young man, making a supreme effort to recover from his sudden dejection, and producing, as a result, a forced and bitter smile. "Why do you fly into such pets? Give it me. But I know what a bad opinion you have of me."
Clementina would not give him her present. Pepe begged for it humbly; still there was in his entreaties a shade of coldness, which to the keen intuition of a woman, betrayed very plainly the disappointment at the bottom of his soul.