"Bravo, bravissimo! I see you were made for me; I hate people who take as much time to fall in love as if they were blind."
"I always reflect with my eyes."
"Ah! that is the true way; but come," rattled on the merry Juanita, "go and give your friend a hint, and I will employ the interim in smoothing the ruffled plumes of an admirer of mine, who has been scowling at me this last half hour, and whose flame is rather too fresh to put an extinguisher on just yet."
"A rival!" exclaimed Ernest in a tragic tone; "he or I must cease to exist."
"Oh! don't be so valiant," cried Doña Juana, leaning back in a violent fit of laughter. "You would have to extinguish twenty of them at that rate."
"Twenty is a large number," said Ernest reflectingly.
"Yes, yes—be wise in time," said the pretty coquette, still laughing. "If you are patient and submissive, you have always the chance of rising to the first rank, you know. I am not very exacting, and provided a caballero devotes himself wholly to my service, enlivens me when I am dull, sympathises with me when I am sad, obeys my commands as religiously as he would his confessor's, anticipates my every wish, and bears with every caprice, is never gloomy or jealous, and is, moreover, unconscious of the existence of any other woman in the world beside, I am satisfied."
"Is that all? Upon my word your demands are moderate."
"Yes, but as our pious friend Doña Estefania says, perfection is not of this world, and so I content myself with a little," replied the animated girl, imitating the look of mock humility, shrouding herself in her mantilla, and wielding her abanico with the identical air and grace which had so completely upset the gravity of the supper-table an hour before. "And then, consider," she continued, as suddenly resuming her own vivacity, "how much more glorious it will be to out-strip a host of competitors, than quietly to take possession of a heart which no one takes the trouble of disputing with you."
"Your logic is positively unanswerable," laughed De Lucenay.