“For this very purpose am I come,” broke in at this opportune moment the silent sword-cutler; “I, as you will have already recognised by my voice, am your neighbour, Master Palomo. I love Maria, and ask you for her hand.”
“Lack-a-day, Master, but your exterior is not very prepossessing. Howbeit, if Maria doth accept you, I am content.”
“I,” replied Maria, wholly abashed, and smoothing the false hair (which then weighed upon her head and heart like a burden of five hundred weight)—“I, so may God enlighten me, for I durst not venture to reply.”
Palomo took her right hand without saying anything, and as he did so Maria looked at the Master’s wrists, and observed the wristbands of his shirt, neatly embroidered, and with some suspicion and beating of her heart said to him—
“If you wish to please me, good neighbour, tell me by what sempstress is this work?”
“It is the work,” replied the Master, jocularly—“the work of a pretty maiden who for five years has toiled for my person, albeit she hath not known it till now.”
“Now I perceive,” said Maria, “how that all the women who have come to give me linen to sew and embroider were sent by you, and that is why they paid me more than is customary.”
The Master did not reply, but he smiled and held out his arms to Maria. Maria threw herself into them, embracing him very caressingly; and Juan himself said to the two—
“In good sooth, you are made one for the other.”
“By my troth, my beloved one,” continued the sword-cutler after a while, “if my countenance had only been more pleasing, I should not have been silent towards you for so many long days, nor would I have been content with gazing at you from afar. I should have spoken to you, you would have made me the confidant of your troubles, and I would have given you the five hundred maravedies for the cure of your good father.” And whispering softly into her ear, he added, “And then you would not have passed that evil moment under the hands of the Mayoress. But if you fear that she may break the promise she made to you to keep silence as to your cropped head, let us, if it please you, set out for Seville, where nobody knows you, and thus——”