The Alhambra and the Inquisition were her two Spanish topics.
"I have not thought of it," Torres mildly replied.
"Well, the Inquisition, then; what do you think of the Inquisition? I am sure you must have studied the subject, and I wish you would give me your real opinion." (She was determined to keep him from following Garda.)
Torres reflected a moment. "It would take some time," he observed, with another glance down the road.
"The more the better," said Rosalie. This sounded effusive; and as she was so loyal to Lucian that everything she did was scrupulously conformed to that feeling, from the way she wore her bonnet to the colors she selected for her gloves, she added, immediately and rather coldly, "It is a subject in which I have been interested for years."
Torres looked at her with gloom. He wished that she had not been interested in it so long, or else that she could be interested longer, carrying it over into the future. The present he yearned for; he wanted to follow that road.
But Rosalie sat there inflexible as Fate; and he was chivalrous to all women, the old as well as the young. He noticed that she was very strongly buttoned into her dress. And then he gave her the opinion she asked for; he was still giving it when the sketching party returned.
Lucian was in gayest spirits. He seized the coffee-pot. "No one should be trusted to pour out coffee," he said, "but a genuine lover of the beverage. See the people pour out who are not real coffee-drinkers themselves; they pour stingily, reluctantly; they give you cold coffee, or coffee half milk, or cups half full; they cannot understand how you can wish for more. Coffee doesn't agree with them very well; they find it, therefore, difficult to believe—in fact they never do believe—that it should really agree with you. It may have been all talked over in the family circle, and a fair generosity on the part of the non-loving pourer guaranteed; but I tell you that in spite of guarantees, she will scrimp."
Mr. Moore, a delicate pink flush on his cheeks, now came up with his grilled slices, which proved to be excellent.
"My cousin, you are a wonderful person," said Lucian.