[CHAPTER XXIII.]
COMPLICATIONS.
We must now return to one of our characters, who up to the present has played but a secondary part in this story; but, as frequently happens, is now called on by the exigencies of our narrative to take his place in the foreground.
We refer to Count Don Stenio de Bejar y Sousa, grandee of Spain of the first class, caballero cubierto, governor for His Majesty Philip II. of Spain and the Indies, of the island of Hispaniola, and husband of Doña Clara de Peñaflor.
Count Don Stenio de Bejar was a true Spaniard of the age of Charles V., dry, stiff, full of pride and self-sufficiency, always with his hand on his hip, and his head thrown back when he deigned to speak, which, happened to him as rarely as possible, not through any want of sense, as he was far from being a fool; but through indolence and contempt of other men, whom he never looked at without half closing his eyes, and raising the corners of his lips disdainfully.
Tall, well built, possessed of noble manners, and a very handsome face, the Count, apart from his determined silence, was one of the most accomplished cavaliers of the Spanish court, which, however, at that period, possessed a great number of them.
His marriage with Doña Clara had been at the outset an affair of convenience and ambition, but gradually, through admiring the charming face of the woman he had married, seeing her gentle eyes fixed on him, and hearing her melodious voice resound in his ear, he had grown to love her—love her madly. Like all men accustomed to shut up and concentrate in their hearts the feelings that possessed them, the passion he experienced for Doña Clara had acquired proportions the more formidable, because the unhappy man had the desperate conviction that it would never be shared by the woman who was the object of it. All Don Stenio's advances had been so peremptorily rejected by his wife, that he at last made up his mind to abstain from them.
But, like all disappointed lovers, this gentleman, who was at the same time the husband—a very aggravating fact in the species, was naturally too infatuated with his own merit, to attribute his defeat to himself, and hence had looked around to discover the fortunate rival who had robbed him of his wife's heart.