“Give it to me; I will keep it.”
The duke passed the roll of paper to her in a magnificent ring.
“What! the ring also, my lord duke?”
Maria placed the ring on her finger, and let fall the paper on the carpet.
“Ah!” thought the duke, “there is no love in that heart, there is no poetry in that soul, no blood in these veins. And yet heaven is in her smile, hell in those eyes, and her voice chants all the harmonies of earth and heaven. Repose yourself, Maria,” he said, rising; “leave your soul in its happy quietude, and do not give entrance to the importunate idea that others grow old and suffer because of you.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
HARDLY had the duke closed the door of the saloon, when Pepe Vera came out of the alcove, laughing.
“Will you keep quiet?” said Maria, occupied in lighting the fire with the precious production of the duke.
“No, my dear, I cannot; I would stifle if I did not laugh. I am no longer jealous, my Mariquita, no more than the sultan in his seraglio. Poor woman! if you had not me to love you ardently, what could you do with a husband, who proves to you his love by his prescriptions—with a bashful lover, who courts you in reciting to you his verses? Now that one of them has gone to dream without sleeping, and the other wishes to sleep, we will go, you and I, and sup with the gay companions who wait for us.”