"Much older than you are: she is at least twenty-five or twenty-six."
"Is she pretty?"
"How do I know? What difference does it make to me whether she is pretty or homely?"
"But is she pretty?"
"They say she is; but I tell you that it makes no difference to me."
The girl was silent for a long time; her heart beat violently. At length she said in a melancholy tone, giving her lover an anxious look:—
"They will persuade you, Alfonso. At last you will agree to marry her."
The Andalusian caballero looked at her with an angry face, and exclaimed with energy:—
"They might tear me in pieces before such a thing happened!"
"You cannot be perfectly sure of it," said she, looking at him with the same anxiety; "they will continue working at you, working at you; they will get you so entangled that finally there will be no way out of it but to yield."