“Nothing, nothing. I may be too long, I shall endanger . . . let us say no more about it. I will stay.”
I went out more pained with her state than my own, and I felt that the best thing I could do would be to forget her, “for,” said I to myself, “even if I do enjoy her once, Sunday will come again; she will confess, repent, and I shall have to begin all over again. She confessed her love, and flatters herself that she will be able to subdue it—a foolish hope, which could only exist in a mind under the dominion of prejudice.”
I came home at noon, and Don Diego dined with me; his daughter did not appear till the dessert. I begged her to sit down, politely, but coldly. Her father asked her jestingly if I had paid her a visit in the night.
“I never suspected Don Jaime of such a thing,” she replied, “and I only objected out of shyness.”
I interrupted her by praising her modesty, and telling her that she would have done quite right to beware of me, if my sense of duty had not been stronger than any voluptuous desires inspired by her charms.
Don Diego pronounced this declaration of love as good as anything to be found in the “Morte d’Arthur.”
His daughter said I was laughing at her, but Don Diego said he was certain that I was in earnest, and that I had known her before taking her to the ball.
“You are utterly mistaken,” said Donna Ignazia, with some degree of fire.
“Your father is wiser than you, senora,” I replied.
“What! How and when did you see me?”