"I adore you, Amalia," he said.
"I love you, Luis," she replied.
Their hands met and pressed affectionately, and their heads were bent in the interchange of a chaste kiss.
CHAPTER IV
THE HISTORY OF THEIR LOVE
Chaste, yes, and perhaps it was the first kiss that had been so in that long love affair. All that was tender and poetic in their affection seemed to rise like a perfume, and transport them with raptures of delight. The remorse that had hitherto weighed so heavily on the sensitive soul of the count was gone. The mad agitation that had tormented them both, the ardour, violence and bitterness which, like the hidden worm in the bud of a rose, had poisoned their wicked love passages, had passed away. Nothing remained but pure love—love satisfied, love consecrated by the holy mysterious force of nature's mysteries.
If only they had met earlier! How often has this been said by people in similar circumstances! And if they had met earlier, they would probably have parted without the slightest feeling of attraction.
Love flourishes on difficulties and takes root on shifting sand, in fact they seem to be the most propitious circumstances for its cultivation.
The report in Lancia was true about Amalia having been forced into a marriage with Don Pedro by her family who were in great straits. Don Antonio Sanchiz, the lady's father, was a Valencian gentleman of means, but gambling and dissipation swallowed up three-fourths of his property. His eldest son, who had the same tastes, spent the remaining fourth by the same means. Amalia was the youngest of the family, which consisted of four girls and one boy. Her eldest sister, who had come in for a little of the decaying splendour of the house, managed to marry a rich banker. Nobody approved of the connection, especially as neither Don Antonio nor his son Antonito managed to see the colour of the money of their respective son, and brother-in-law. The other two married men of good family but without money. Amalia grew up in the midst of the total ruin of her house. Neither her elegant figure nor her high birth brought her admirers. The well-known misfortunes of the house, and her father and brother's bad reputation, constituted an unsurmountable barrier around her. Her feelings were often touched by those who only paid her attention out of idleness, or love of flirtation. She was certainly not a typical beauty: she was wanting in gracefulness of figure, plumpness of form, and brightness of complexion. But in spite of her slight, and not at all well formed figure, and the constant pallor of her cheeks, there was something attractive about her, which grew upon one the more you saw of her. Perhaps this charm lay in her large expressive dark eyes, which reflected every emotion: now they shone with a fire that breathed a deep and passionate nature, now they looked quiet, ecstatic and limpid in a sort of mystic rapture, now they were merry and mischievous, now they were dreamy and melancholy, now tender and tearful, now sparkling with fun or shining with anger. Perhaps her charm lay in her versatility, in the keenness of her intellect, in her sympathetic and insinuating voice. She was, in short, an interesting, charming woman. I do not know whether it was owing to her pride or her naturally tempestuous mind, but scorning the young men of her own rank, who courted her without resolving to ask for her hand, she lost her heart to a modest young man, a poor government clerk with an income of forty thousand reales,[I] son of a schoolmaster. The blue blood of the Sanchiz in the veins of Antonio, Antonito, her sisters, and the banker, her brother-in-law, in whom it was conspicuous by its absence, boiled in indignation.
She was the victim of active, fierce persecution. But as she was not wanting in spirit, and was moreover possessed of a mind fertile in resources, she certainly managed to defy the family for some time; their entreaties and threats were of no avail and her time of enforced retreat in a convent was equally ineffectual. If the clerk had not happened to die of phthisis, which killed him in a few months, it is almost certain that the very noble and straitened house of the Sanchiz would have had to see itself allied to the son of a schoolmaster.