After the first greetings were over María asked:
“Tell me, Mamma, did I dream it, or is it true that I heard Gustavo’s voice and my husband’s as if they were quarrelling?”
“We had a little discussion,” said the young man, who had not yet recovered from his pallor and nervousness, nor got rid of the lines in his forehead—that sacred tablet on which fancy might read the decalogue and the latest code.
“No, no, mere words and rubbish,” interrupted Milagros, whose one idea was the reconciliation, a thought intimately allied with the wish.
“Your respected husband, made madly savage by my accusations, proposed to settle my share in the business by flinging me over the balcony like a cigar-end,” said Gustavo, and he tried to laugh at his own wit in the belief that the effort would restore his nerves to their normal balance.
“Where was this?”
“In the ‘hall of Hymen.’”
“What is that?”
“Don’t worry yourself about it, my darling child.”
“My dearest daughter,” said her father, caressing her, “you must learn to accustom yourself to view your husband’s proceedings with indifference, and to feel that what he does, or leaves undone cannot matter to you. It is greatly to be regretted that you cannot get over certain deeply-rooted feelings, and that you are bent on being a martyr and struggling against wind and tide.”