"Don't trouble about it any more; it's all the same one way or the other."
"What do you mean, 'all the same'? Since when, señorita, have you grown so indifferent to matters of the toilet? I am certain that if I were to bring you this jewelry, you would laugh me to scorn."
"Don't imagine such a thing."
"Perhaps you think I don't remember how you made fun of that hat that your aunt Carmen presented you a few days ago!"
"It was very wrong of me to make fun of it; but you are just as bad when you throw it in my face. The truth is that in the end one hat or one set of jewelry is as good as another."
"Be it so! Keep it up! I know you well, and you can't cheat me. The jewelry shall be sent back, and in its place we'll have another set to my taste and yours. But let's drop the subject. I had something to tell you, and I can't remember what it was. Oh, yes! we must write to your uncle Rodrigo, for judging by the note I have just received from him, he doesn't know yet the day on which we are to be married. I think we ought to write him both of us in the same letter; doesn't it seem so to you?"
"Just as you like."
"All right; I'll come round to-morrow before dinner, and we'll write it."
Both remained silent a few moments and listened to the singing of Don Serapio, who was lamenting always with a more and more pathetic accent the solitude and sadness in which his mistress kept him. One of the Delgado señoritas lifted her handkerchief to her eyes, declaring in a low voice to those standing near that hitherto there had been few things that ever brought the tears into her eyes.
"What a bore that wretched Don Serapio is! he wrinkles up his forehead so that his wig is almost lifted off behind."