The marquis bowed respectfully to her—
"Not, Señorita, before you have deigned to take a seat."
"What good will that do? But," she added, "if that mark of condescension will abridge this interview, it would ill become me not to obey you."
The marquis bit his lip, but did not answer.
Doña Laura seated herself on the sofa farthest removed, and crossing her arms on her chest with a wearied air, while she fixed on her interlocutor a haughty look—
"Speak now, I beg you," said she. "Phoebe has not lied to you; I am extremely fatigued."
These words were hissed, if we may employ the happy expression of an old author, from the most sharpened beak than can be imagined, and doña Laura leant her head on a cushion, feigning a slight gape.
But the resolution of the marquis had been taken, not to see or understand anything.
Doña Laura was sixteen years of age; all grace and delicacy. Her charmingly developed figure had that sprightliness which Spanish women alone possess. Her bearing was marked by that careless and voluptuous languor, the secret of which the Hispano-Americans have obtained from the Andalusians. Her long deep chestnut hair fell in silky ringlets on brilliantly white shoulders; her blue and dreamy eyes seemed to reflect the azure of the sky, and were crowned by black eyebrows, the delicate outline of which was traced as with a pencil. Her finely chiselled nose, and her charming little mouth, which, in half opening, discovered a double row of pearly teeth, completed a beauty rendered more gentle and noble by the delicacy and transparency of her skin.
Dressed in gauze and muslin, like all Creoles, the young girl was ravishing, seated on a sofa like the beija flor in the chalice of a flower, especially at that moment when anger, suppressed and mastered with difficulty, caused her virgin bosom to palpitate, and covered her cheeks with a crimson flush, doña Laura had something seductive, and at the same time majestic about her, which imposed respect, and almost commanded veneration.