“Then, by the Constitution! you are in love with Señor Miranda?”
“See there! I don’t think that, though I have never thought much about those things, or what it may be like to fall in love; but I imagine it must be more exciting like, and that it comes to one more of a sudden—with more violence.”
“But these violent attachments, what need is there of them to be a good wife?”
“None, I suppose. To be a good wife, Father Urtazu says, the most needful thing is the grace of God—and patience, a great deal of patience.”
Her father tapped her on the cheek with his broad palm.
“By the Constitution! you talk like a book. So, then, according to that, I am going to give Señor Miranda pleasing news!”
“Oh, father, the matter needs thinking over. Do me the favor to think over it for me, you; what do I know about marrying, or——”
“See here, you are now a big girl. You are too much of a simpleton.”
“No,” said Lucía, fixing her clear eyes on the old man’s face, “it is not that I am simple, it is that I do not wish to understand—do you hear? For if I begin to think about those things I shall end by losing my appetite, and my sleep, and my light-heartedness. To-night, of a certainty, I shall not close my eyes, and afterward Señor de Rada will say in Latin that I am ill in mind and that I am going to be ill in body. I wish to think of nothing but my amusements and my lessons. Of that other matter, no; for, if I did, my fancy would wander on and on, and I should pass whole hours with my hands crossed before me, sitting motionless as a post. The truth is that when my thoughts run that way I fancy there is not a man in all the world to equal the lover I picture to myself; who, for that matter, is not in this world,—don’t imagine it,—but far away in distant palaces and gardens. But I don’t know how to explain myself. Can you understand what I mean?”
“Have they been putting the notion into your head of becoming a nun like Agueda, the daughter of the directress of the seminary?” cried Señor Joaquin, angrily.