“She is very beautiful,” affirmed his friend, “and you must know that she rides like a Cossack.”
“Oh! Athenaïs la Moneda has the most elegant figure and complexion—so pale!—and the fiercest glances” (he meant haughtiest) “of all the belles of Madrid. She is delicious!” exclaimed the Parisian.
“She has the neck of a swan, with such serpentine undulating,” said Bonifacio, quite at a loss for another comparison.
“The most desirable parte, ma foi! Her father is worth forty millions, and she is the only daughter,” continued the capitalist, who did not allow his appreciation of beauty to interfere with his devotion to dollars.
“You ought to improve your opportunity, and marry at once,” advised the friend. “These girls with forty millions are more capricious than the wind. They change oftener than weather-cocks, and do just as they please; for millionaire fathers who know only the Castilian have the highest consideration for daughters
who have learned French from Sue’s novels, and Italian at the opera.”
“An heiress’s whim is like a flash of lightning. In losing time, you expose yourself to a—”
“To a deception,” said the capitalist, concluding the sentence.
“To a disabusement,” said the copy, thinking, with profound satisfaction, that he had, for once, surpassed the original.
“What is your opinion of all this?” asked Gallardo of his uncle, with a laugh, intended to appear jesting, but which betrayed his interior satisfaction.