Arthur was very nervous when he started that evening for Count Leon's. He still felt in many respects a boy, and in spite of Leon's report, he felt it hardly possible that Donna Mercedes could have come to love him. He dressed himself in his evening suit with unusual care, but did not start till the last moment. He was shown up into the drawing-room as usual. Mercedes and her two sisters were in the room.
"I have to quarrel with you," the former said laughingly. "I hear that you have been cruelly ill-treating a gentleman in whom I had once great interest;--not only ill-treating him, but turning him into a laughing-stock. Now, señor, I demand that you tell us what it was about, and why you have thus assailed a gentleman to whom, as you know, I was once much attached."
"Were you much attached to him, Donna Mercedes?"
"Well," she said, pouting, "you know I was all but affianced to him."
"By your own wishes, señora?"
"Well, never mind about my own wishes," she said; "it is quite sufficient that I was almost affianced to him. Now I demand from you again a true and complete history how this came about."
"Well," he said, "you can hardly expect, señora, that I should go into particulars of this kind before your sisters--young ladies, who cannot but be horrified by deeds of violence."
Mercedes laughed. "Well, you will tell me some day, won't you, what it was all about, and why you so ill-treated him? I hear that he will not be able to show his face for some time in Madrid."
"I will tell you all that is good for you to learn," he said in a tone of banter. "I know that you must be grieving terribly over it."
"Of course I am, dreadfully!" the girl said. "When I heard how you had been treating him, I almost made up my mind not to speak to you again. Ah! here is Leon, and looking as serious as a judge."