No, Jacinto Quesada had not.
"It is not too late, intrepid one, to make amends! Any Gypsy wench would be most glad to have you for a lover. Even a Gypsy count's daughter, even the loveliest Gypsy maid in all the Spains, would not be too proud to cling to your kisses, Busno though you be! Don Jacinto, I—I—Paquita—could love you, and no trouble at all!"
Persistently, he watched the water shrews in the runlet.
"Am I not prettier than she?"
"Of whom do you speak?"
"This highborn lady, this slow-blooded and cold aristocrat—she who is as pale as a sickly lily, as slender and ungraceful as a growing boy—this Felicidad!"
"I would not say she is too slender, Paquita; I would not say she is too pale! It is only that her sort of beauty does not please you, because it is not the Gypsy kind with which you are familiar."
"It is not that, Don Jacinto! I have seen her unclothed, I have seen her costumed only in her alabaster skin. There she stood in as much loveliness as the Senor Don Dios had thought fit to give her. And I looked her up and down with a woman's eye. Chachipe! the wench had nothing of fascination and beauty about her that I have not! She is young, yes, and soft, yes, and smooth of skin, and somewhat gracefully shaped. But she is at least three years older than I, and she is no more a woman, no better rounded. My breasts are as fully blossomed and alluring! My—"
"Paquita, you are indiscreet!"
"Indiscreet? I, a Gypsy girl, indiscreet? Don Jacinto, we Gitanas are never indiscreet! A kiss or two, an errant arm about the waist, or a hand upon the breasts—what of that? An uncovered bosom, a shapely leg bared to the knee—there is little evil in that. But if you venture too far, if you touch upon our honor, thinking that we and honor to each other are strangers—Tate! you will find a dirk has nosed its way between your ribs!"