“It seems to me,” she replied, elevating her eyelids, “it seems to me you need not ask me why. You know it is not proper that two honest persons live together under the same roof. It gives rise to scandal.”
“And who could bring scandal against you?” replied Don Modesto; “you, the village model!”
“Are you sure there will not be something? What will you say when you learn that you yourself, despite your great age, your uniform, and your cross, and I, a poor girl who thinks only of serving God, that we afford amusement to these scandal-mongers?”
“What say you?” demanded Don Modesto, saddened.
“What you have just heard. And no one knows us but under nicknames which they apply to us, these cursed!”
“I am stunned, Rosita. I cannot believe—”
“So much the better for you if you do not believe it,” said the devout girl; “but I avow to you that these impious ones,—God pardon them!—when they see us arrive together at the church, at the early morning mass, they say, one to the other: ‘Sound the mass, here come the Mystic Rose and the Tower of David, in armor and in company, as in the litanies.’ They have thus dubbed you, because your figure is so erect, so tall, and so solid.”
Don Modesto remained, his mouth open, and his eyes fixed on the ground.
“Yes, señor,” continued the Mystic Rose; “the neighbor who told me this was scandalized, and advised me to go and complain to the cura. I replied to her it were better that I restrained myself, and suffered. Our Lord suffered more than I, without complaining.”
“Well!” said Modesto; “I will not permit that they mock me, and still less you.”