“Don’t be absurd,” she retorted, kissing me affectionately. “You look like a Duchess with a black mantilla over your white hair, and if you haven’t got yours here, Mamma shall find one for you.”
Who could resist the pretty creature? And she meant every word of it, at any rate while she was speaking. But she really was sincere in her desire that I should be there as an intimate friend, not a mere acquaintance, and when I arrived shortly before two o’clock on the eventful afternoon I found little ten-year-old Lola, otherwise Dolores, waiting for me at the door, having been ordered by the bride to see that I was taken special care of, “because being a foreigner I might not know exactly where to go, and thus might fail to enjoy myself.”
Such consideration really surprised me. Carmen might well have been excused for forgetting, on this great day of her life, that one of her guests was a foreigner; yet she had not only planned for my pleasure, but, as I found, had asked more than one of her old friends to look out for me and see that I was placed where I could have a good view of the ceremony before the side altar of the Virgen del Carmen, at which she had worshipped throughout her short life.
THE CHURCH WHERE CARMENCITA WAS MARRIED.
CHAPTER III
The wedding—Our Lady of the Carmen: her lady-in-waiting—The ancestral house of the Campos Abandonados—The kissing habit in Spain—Muscatel and Manzanilla—Arabic sweetmeats—King Alfonso and the convent yemas—The bride’s dance—Mantillas and a hat—Good-bye to Carmencita.
This image of the Virgin of the Carmen has no particular artistic merit, but Carmencita was promoted to being her “lady-in-waiting” when she left school, and had taken great pride in keeping “her” Virgin’s wardrobe in perfect order; and to-day she had gone very early to Mass and had dressed the image, for the last time, in the festival robe of eighteenth-century brocade and the tulle veil she had herself embroidered to present to her Virgin on her first communion. She had also filled the silver vases with the tall stiff bouquets which are so much admired here, and had offered quite a number of gilded wax candles for a blessing on her marriage.