The riders who had escorted Doña Sol greeted the espada with the greatest display of enthusiasm, his manager winked at him and then whispered mysteriously:
"Gacho, you have not been behindhand. Very good: extremely good! Now I tell you she is yours."
Outside the palisade, Doña Sol was sitting in a landau, with the Marquis's daughters. Her terrified cousins felt her all over, determined to find something put out of joint by her fall. They offered her glasses of Manzanilla to get over her fright, but she, smiling vaguely, received these evidences of feminine concern with contemptuous indifference.
As she saw Gallardo pushing his horse through the ranks of people, between waving hats and outstretched hands, she smiled cordially.
"Come here to me, Cid Campeador![81] Give me your hand."
And once again their right hands met, in a long, vigorous clasp.
That evening the affair of which all Seville was talking, was also much canvassed in the matador's house. The Señora Angustias was beaming as after a great corrida. Her son saving one of those great ladies, whom she, accustomed to years of servitude, had always looked upon with such deference and admiration! but Carmen remained silent, not knowing quite what to think of the occurrence.
Many days passed without Gallardo having any news of Doña Sol. His manager was out of town, at a hunting party with some of his friends of the "Forty-Five." But one evening Don José went to seek his matador at a café in the Calle de las Sierpes, where many amateurs of "the sport" gathered. He had only returned a couple of hours previously from the hunting party, and had gone at once to Doña Sol's house, in consequence of a note which he had found waiting for him.
"God bless me, man! you are worse than a wolf!" said the manager, marching his man out of the café. "The lady expected you at her house. She has stayed at home evening after evening thinking you might come at any moment. Such things are not done. After being presented, and after what happened you owed her a visit, were it only to enquire after her health."