"Please talk about what you know. You haven't the slightest idea what is going on in my mind," she rejoined, with a severe intonation; and turning to her cousin, and looking him straight in the face, she added:—
"And supposing I had, what of it?"
"Nothing," replied Don Alfonso, calmly. "How glad I should be if you had one worthy of you; but it seems to me that would not be very easy, considering what a nice girl you are, little coz!"
"Oh yes, I am an angel!" exclaimed the girl, in a sarcastic tone.
She remained a moment lost in thought, then, jumping up, left the room.
Miguel had been surprised by his sister's answer, not so much at the significance of her words as at the violent and scornful tone which till that time she had never used toward him. And stopping to think a moment, he was not slow to fathom what was passing through the girl's mind.
She came back again after a few moments, with smiling face, the same as before, and began to enliven the tertulia with her witticisms. She did not sit down, but kept moving about the room with the lithe grace and liveliness characteristic of her.
Miguel noticed, however, that there was too much excitement underneath her gayety: she went rapidly from one subject to another; she asked questions and answered them herself, and laughed boisterously at the slightest excuse. She sat down at the piano and began to play very loud; then she sang a romanza from an opera, and this she suddenly changed into a Spanish song, which she did not finish either. Then she quitted the piano to frolic with Maximina, whom she obliged to dance a polka whether she would or no; presently she accosted her brother and kissed him again and again, saying to Maximina:—
"You aren't jealous, are you now?"
Don Alfonso's eyes followed her in all these evolutions keenly and persistently, with a peculiar expression of gentle irony. Miguel noticed it, and made a slight gesture of dissatisfaction.