“Well, I’m sorry you didn’t propose,” she said, sedately. “Now I suppose you never will. You would have been quite a feather in my cap.”
“That means you would not have accepted me?”
“Did you imagine I would?”
“There have been times when I did.” He was now goaded into boldness.
“Well, you’re just a conceited Englishman!” she cried, furiously. “If I thought you meant that I’d never speak to you again!”
“Now I know where I am,” he said, serenely. “This, after all, is the only you I am at home with.”
“Well, don’t speak to me again for twenty-four hours. I can’t stand you. Thank Heaven, there is the train!”
Some hours later he found her sitting at the drawing-room window of the hotel looking down upon the most characteristic sight in Madrid—the afternoon procession of carriages.
From four o’clock until any hour of a fine night, while the national stew simmers on the back of the stove, the wealth and fashion, and those that would be or seem to be both, drive out the Calle de Alcala to the great paseos and parks, and back through the narrow Carrera San Jeronimo in an unbroken line that bewilders the eye and creates the delusion of an endless and automatic chain. There are more private carriages in Madrid than in any city in the world, and in bright weather their owners would appear to live in them, indifferent to hunger or fatigue. Those who have Paris gowns exhibit them, those who have not hide their poverty under the always picturesque mantilla; but few are so poor as not to own a turnout. A woman of any degree of fashion in Madrid will sell her house if necessary, her furniture, her jewels, and live in two rooms with one or no servant, but have her carriage and her daily drive she will; for to lose one’s place in that distinguished chain would be to lose one’s hold on the world itself. So long as they can see and be seen daily in the avenues they love, bow to the same familiar faces, and criticise the gowns of friend and foe, the olla podrida can burn and the frock under the mantilla be darned and turned, the daughters dowerless, and even theatre tickets unavailable. They have, at least, the best in life; and then there is always the long morning in bed and the bull-fight. And who would not envy a people so tenacious of the desirable and so bravely satisfied?
Catalina was at the window on the Carrera San Jeronimo, and there was no one else in the sala at the moment. Over approached in some trepidation, not having been spoken to since the final word on the slope of the Escorial; but Catalina, diverted by the bright birds of paradise on their homeward flight, looked up and smiled charmingly. She wore one of her white frocks, and a string of pearls in her hair, and stirred the languid air with a large black fan. In a strong light she was always beautiful, and in the late, sun-touched shadows of evening, with her pretty teeth showing between the red, waving line of her lips, she looked very sweet and seductive.