Opens the door. Enter Dennys.
Dennys: Hail! Medea of Castille! Your fame has drawn me all the way from France. Why, ’twill soon rival the fame of your St. James, and from every corner of Christendom love-sick wights and ladies will come to you on pilgrimage.
Trotaconventos (laughing and eyeing him with evident favour): A pox on your flowery tongue! I know you French of old ... hot tongues and cold, hard hearts. Oh, you saucy knave; you! But see, your cloak is wet with dew. Come, I will shake it for you. (Draws off his cloak and at the same time slips her hand down his neck and tickles him).
Dennys: A truce! A truce! Thus you could unman me to yield you all my gold and tell you all my secrets. (Wriggles out of the cloak, leaving it in her hands.) Do you know the ballad of the Roman knight, Joseph, and Doña Potiphar?
Trotaconventos: Ay, that I do; and a poor puling ballad it is too! But you are no Sir Joseph, my pretty lad ... while others that I know ... (glances resentfully at Don Manuel de Lara, who is still sitting with his head buried in his hands. Dennys, following her glance, catches sight of him.)
Dennys: Some poor, love-sick wight? Why, then, are we guild brothers, and of that guild you are the virgin, fairer and more potent than she of the kings or of the waters; as with fists and cudgels we will maintain against all other guilds at Holy Week. Oh! I have heard of your miracles. That pious young widow with a virtue as unyielding as her body was soft, how....
Trotaconventos: Out on you, you saucy Frenchman! It would take a French tongue to call Trotaconventos a virgin. Why, before you were born ... come, I’ll tell you a secret. (She whispers something in his ear. He bursts out laughing.)
Dennys: Holy Mother of God! You should have given suck to Don Ovid. Why, that beats all the French fabliaux. Well, now as to my business. You must know I had a wager that, disguised as a mendicant friar, I would visit undiscovered twenty of the convents of Seville....
Trotaconventos (chuckling): A bold and merry wager!