"It is very pretty," he quickly returned politely.
"It belonged to my mother. It is better than it looks. This portrait, which is of my grandmother, is made in mosaic. Look!"
Whereupon she raised her hand, and Moro looked at it with assumed admiration.
"Look well at it."
And she raised it a little more so as to bring it near his face. Then seeing out of the corner of her eye that Don Pedro was looking at her, she lifted it a little more so as to brush the lips of the young man; then she instantly withdrew it with a quick gesture. Moro was quite taken aback. He involuntarily looked at Don Pedro, and seeing that his glance was fixed on him with a cold piercing look, he coloured up to the eyes; and Amalia rose and left the room as if to hide her confusion.
The proud Grandee was fully overwhelmed by the secret that he thought he had discovered. His ideas underwent a sudden shock. Agitated by a thousand conflicting suspicions, dominated by furious anger, he moved the cards in his trembling hands without thinking of them, for his mind was full of awful revenge against his wife and against him. Against whom? Who was the traitor? Doubt inflamed his rage. What he had seen was very conclusive. Nevertheless, he could not get the Conde de Onis out of his mind. The testimony of his eyes was arrayed against his instinct, a voice within that told him continually the name of his enemy.
The count himself then appeared at the party. He greeted Amalia coldly, and was going straight to the library, when Manuel Antonio caught hold of him by the tail of his coat.
"Where are you off to, Luis? Come here, boy; don't go and bury yourself in the game directly. Look here, Maria Josefa and Jovita have been disputing every evening about the date of your marriage. But I said to them: 'Don't dispute any more. If Luis comes to-day he is so kind that he will certainly tell you himself.'"
"Then you told them wrong," replied the count, approaching the group.
"Have you turned so cross then?"