When we finished, he rose before taking his coffee, lighted a good cigar, and asked his brother-in-law if he would let him take his cab.
"But are you going out?" his wife asked him with surprise and annoyance.
"Yes; I am going to take my coffee at the Siglo. I haven't seen a single one of my friends yet. I shall be back soon."
Matilde tried to keep him, begging that he would not go that night, caressing his hands, with no result except to make him cross. Observing, however, the bad effect this had upon us, he changed his tone and embraced her, saying in endearing accents:
"Goosie! Aren't you going to let me go and celebrate our reconciliation?"
With this the infatuated wife was satisfied and content, brushed the dust from his shoes, and went with him to the cab door.
We remained in the dining-room some time. Emilio was the first to start to bed, saying that he felt sleepy. I thought that his hemorrhage had affected him more than he had acknowledged. Matilde went up to put her children to bed. We remained chatting, Isabelita and I in one corner, Cristina and Castell in another, while Doña Amparo embroidered by the light of a lamp between.
This state of things impressed me uncomfortably. We seemed like two pairs engaged in courtship, watched over by the mamma; and this idea, so far as it concerned Cristina and Castell, could not but fill me with great repugnance. Such was my faith in that woman that I scarcely believed what I saw. I was absent and melancholy, and with difficulty kept up the conversation with my intended.
My intended! The winds were driving me upon a coast where I didn't know whether I was going to be shipwrecked or find a snug harbor. I confessed to myself with alarm that since my dreadful convictions about Cristina, my heart was less inclined than ever to admit another woman.
When Matilde came down after getting her children to bed, in order to get out of this scarcely decent situation, and also to rid myself a little of the sadness that overpowered me, I proposed that we take a turn in the park. The proposition met with favor, and Cristina was the first to accept it, rising from the sofa where she had been sitting. But Castell said, with his usual decision: