Don Cornelio, driven into his last retrenchments, determined to make a clean breast of it.

"You must know," he said in a honeyed voice, "that my friends are hunters."

"Ah!" she remarked.

"Yes."

"Well, what then?"

"Why, then, why, they hunt, I suppose," he continued, discountenanced by the lady's singular tone.

"That is probable," she said, with a little silvery laugh. "And what do they hunt?"

"Well, pretty nearly all sorts of animals."

"Specify."

"Wild bulls, for instance."