He seldom visited Belinchon's house, but when he met the girl in the street he made a point of stopping her and treating her with exceptional courtesy and attention.
"You do not love her?" he repeated. "And why don't you love her, you dunderhead?"
"I don't know. I have made superhuman efforts to love her, and I have not succeeded."
"And you have just found that out—a month before your marriage? Come, Gonzalo, you have got a screw loose."
"It is shameful—I grant it—but I can't resign myself to being unhappy for life."
"Unhappy! And you call it unhappiness, you great fool, to marry the nicest and prettiest girl in Sarrio, for no other can hold a candle to her."
Gonzalo could not forbear smiling.
"Cecilia is a good girl, and worthy of marrying a better man than I am, but pretty, uncle—"
"Pretty, yes, pretty, you fool!" exclaimed the Señor de las Cuevas in a rage; "you would find fault with an angel."
Surprising as the statement may be, the old man was at that time of life when one is more impressed by the poetry of womanhood, seen in exquisite sensibility, resignation, sweetness, and self-sacrifice, than by the ephemeral physical charms before which impetuous youth is so prone to fall captive.