He turned pale. His face became so sad that the girl, repressing a smile with difficulty, repeated the remark with still greater decision:
"I shall not be led into a second marriage--unless it be with you."
"Is it really so?" he finally asked, in a trembling voice.
"Yes, it is really so!" she returned, looking at him with a smile.
They held each other's hands affectionately for some moments. Then the count rose without saying another word. When he arrived home he wrote her a long letter of six pages, describing his passion in the most glowing colours, giving her fervent thanks, and three or four times calling himself an unworthy fellow. The marriage was arranged to take place at the end of the year of mourning, of which there were still two months to run. They decided to keep the matter secret, and not to have the ceremony in Lancia. A few days before the wedding-day she was to go to Madrid, where he would join her, and there at the capital they were to be united for ever.
It is very difficult in little towns to hide anything, and to conceal a projected marriage is impossible. Every pair of eyes and every pair of ears seemed magnified to a hundred, so intensely were sight and hearing concentrated on the couple. By their gait, looks, and manner of greeting, and leaving each other, the ingenious Lancians guessed by veritable magic of what the couple was thinking, and they calculated exactly the progress of the affair that excited such interest in them.
As Manuel Antonio was passing the old-world dwelling of the count, he saw a maid come out with a cardboard box in her hand. The Chatterbox at once scented a wedding, so he took breath and followed her.
"How do you do, Laura?" he said, passing her. Then turning quickly, he said in a careless sort of way:
"Ah! But I was told--well, have not seen him for two days. Are you going shopping for the señora?"
"From Ramiro's? Let me see them, as I have to get some too."
The maid opened the box, and the Chatterbox examined the contents.
"They are very fine; they would be too dear for me."
"Yes, señor, they are dear, and yet the señor does not think they are good enough. He wants them of silk, at whatever cost, and although I have been to every shop I can't get them. There is nothing for it but to order them."