"Why, it was because ... because Maximina doesn't take lunch."
"What do you mean ... doesn't take lunch?" exclaimed Miguel, in astonishment.
"I asked her about it the very first day, and she told me that she was not in the habit of taking lunch."
Miguel gazed at Maximina, who blushed as though she had been detected in some heinous crime.
"Then I will tell you that she does," he said, raising his voice and turning upon Julia with stern countenance. "I tell you that she always is accustomed to have one, and you have done very wrong, knowing her disposition, not to insist upon it, or at least not to have asked me about it."
"For Heaven's sake, Miguel!" murmured Maximina, in a tone of real anguish.
Julia flushed deeply, and turning on her heels, hastened from the room. Maximina remained like one petrified.
Her husband, with a frowning face, strode up and down the room several times, and then followed his sister and went straight to the dining-room, where he found her very melancholy, taking out some plates. Giving her a caress, and bursting into a laugh, he said:—
"I knew well that Maximina did not ask for lunch. Don't mind what I said to you. I put her in this painful position to see if I could not cure her of her bashfulness."
"Then you had better be careful! your gun went off at the wrong end, for it was I whom you hit!" answered the young girl, really vexed. "And so you are trying to make it up by flattery!"