In the third act Saavedra returned to his place beside the duchess, without Julita appearing to notice it at all. When they left the theatre, it was raining, and Don Alfonso went down and put them into a cab.
When he reached home half an hour later, he found Julia taking a cup of lime juice in the dining-room.
As their eyes met, Don Alfonso smiled not very openly. Julita had a very high color. Don Alfonso's smile seemed to say: "I know why you are drinking that tila."
Julita's blushes proclaimed in a loud voice: "You have caught me in the very act!"
At the beginning of summer Saavedra determined to go and make his mother a visit before returning to Paris. Julia heard the news with indifference; she even started to sing some Malaga songs at the piano, leaving her mother and cousin to talk about the journey.
La brigadiera begged him to stay a few days longer; Don Alfonso refused gently but obstinately, declaring that he had given his mother notice, and had named the day on which he should reach Seville.
La brigadiera urged him persistently, like a woman accustomed to have her own way, and Don Alfonso resisted no less persistently, like a man whose determinations, though expressed politely, are irrevocably fixed.
Julia suddenly stopped singing, and half turning round, said, in a dry and impatient tone:—
"Mamma, you are annoying him; do cease!"
"I am not going for my own pleasure, Julia," returned Don Alfonso, blandly; "you know too well that nowhere in the world am I more contented than I am here, and that I am perfectly satisfied to be with Aunt Angela and you; but I have duties toward my mother that I must fulfil, and I am obliged to be in Seville."