“Ah,” said Isabel, “Manoel knows not. He knows not that I love one whom I have seen at mass, though I know not his name. But with my fan I can show him—”
“Isabel!” again said the grave Carmen; while Gipsy, who was far too well bred and well brought up to have made signs in church with anything, thought that “mass” and “a signal with a fan” sounded interesting, and that what would have been highly unladylike at home was rather romantic in Seville.
On their side, Carmen and Isabel thought Gipsy hardly used in being kept away from the bull-fights, though she was too loyal to her nationality to express any wish to see them.
Don Manoel was a great lover of the ring, and as certain young bulls from Don Guzman’s estate were to be brought forward at the last corrida of the season, there was a great desire that the Englishmen should be present. Mr Stanforth intended to avail himself of the chance of seeing such a spectacle, and Cheriton, Don Guzman said, might see one contest, and go away before the other bulls were brought forward, if he found the fatigue too much for him. They would get seats on the shady side of the bull-ring, the great amphitheatre said to be capable of holding ten thousand spectators.
Cheriton, who went against Alvar’s wish, did not stay for the end, and Mr Stanforth went to see if he had repented of the rather perverse desire to prove himself capable of enduring the spectacle. He found him, still full of excitement, resting on a sofa in the patio; while Alvar sat near him, smoking, and looking cool and bored, as if the bull-fight had been a croquet party.
Mr Stanforth’s entrance was rather inopportune, for Cherry was still too full of his impressions not to talk of them, and, in answer to Mr Stanforth’s question, said eagerly,—
“Oh, the heat has tired me—that is nothing. But it made one feel like a fiend. I felt all the fascination of it—even the horror had a dreadful sort of attraction. I could not have come away if Alvar had not pulled me out when I was too dizzy to resist him.”
“Very unwholesome fascination,” said Mr Stanforth.
“Unwholesome! I should think so! It is abominable that such things should be. I tell Alvar that in his place I never would encourage an appeal to the worst passions of human nature.”
“Well, you would go, mi caro. I told you you would not like it,” said Alvar coolly.