“You will not mind now,” he said. “It is so long ago, and it is all over. Sebastiano has come back. He did not go to America; he is in Madrid to-day. He came to me in the street; he did not avoid me; he was rejoiced to see me. It appears that it is all well with him. Afterward Manuel told me. It appears there is a very pretty girl he met in Lisbon—she is here now. It is said he will marry her.”
Pepita clinched her hands and stared at him with eyes that burned as never before.
“It is not true!” she said through her teeth. “It is not true!”
José fell back two steps.
“Not true?” he stammered. “Why not? They say so.”
“A man who slays bulls as he does,” she said, “does not forget a woman in a day.”
José was lost in amazement.
“I thought you believed nothing but ill of him,” he said. “What has happened? You are angry—angry.”
“It is not true about the girl from Lisbon,” she said. “It is a lie they amuse themselves with.”
Never had innocent José been so thunderstruck. This was beyond his understanding. He was afraid to speak, and kept looking sidewise at her as he ate his soup; but she said no more.