“Juan, ‘where there has been familiarity, let there be no contract.’”
“If it were as you intimate, I ought to marry; for, if this woman has lost respect through me—”
“Stop, Juan; that’ll do! Don’t come to me with your ‘mea culpas.’ There is always a pretext for wrong-doing. But you know very well that the woman has not lost respect through you. Nobody loses what he never had.”
“Uncle Bartolo, by what I shave off, but that you comb gray hairs, and were my father’s friend—Vive Dios!—”
“Tut, tut, man! Don’t get excited, and talk nonsense! I did not come here to poke you up, nor to pick a quarrel, but with a very good intention; and, as the friend I am to you, to prevent your making an atrocious fool of yourself. Have you considered your children, and the kind of step-mother you are going to give them?”
“If she will be a wife good enough for their father, it appears to me that she will be a good enough step-mother for them; especially as, where they are concerned, what I do is right.”
“Right! Now you are like the Englishman, Don ‘Turo, that killed an urraca for a partridge, and then said ‘all right.’ Take notice, Juan, that they are not likely to be willing to live under that woman’s flag. You are going to alienate them from you, and, ‘withdraw thyself from thine own, God will leave thee alone.’”
“They will not be willing to live under her! What are you saying,
sir? We shall see, however. ‘Where the sea goes, the waves go.’”
“Well, Juan, we shall see that Lucas, who is high-minded, will not consent to let his sister live with a woman of evil note.”