Now the doctor, who quoted Kelaart as if he had been his own father, and expatiated to the old lady on geology (with mineralogy, botany, and Scottish metaphysics), was so very particular in explaining the leaves, fibres, and various properties of the _Iberus Giberaltarica_, the only plant peculiar to the rock, that the stout Donna Dominga, who deemed all this but the language of the flowers, and viewed everything through the medium of gallantry, became troubled in spirit, and would occasionally blush behind the sticks of her fan, or ogle and look unutterable things at our poor unconscious medico. She would sigh tenderly when he plucked the soft palmetto which grows in the rocky crevices, or tremble over the white polyanthus, and was ready to drop like a ripe pumpkin into his arms, when he grew eloquent upon the various species of the cacti.
This was all very well while it lasted, for while the ponderous old donna thought that our quiet, canny, and discreet Galen, who signed himself M.D. of St. Andrews, and F.E.C.S. of Edinburgh, was a lover of her own, she forgot to look too narrowly after us; and believed that she had found a most agreeable mode of passing the month in Gibraltar, which, for change of air, had been recommended by some sangrado of Seville, as her health had become somewhat impaired by ease and good living.
I was so dazzled and delighted with the charming Paulina, and her pretty little ways, that I had really begun to prepare my mind for repelling the banter of the mess, and for waiting with due solemnity upon Donna Dominga to confer with her alone, upon settlements and so forth, when a terrible denouement took place! Having rashly boasted of her imaginary conquest over our doctor, to a lady whom she met at the house of a rich Spanish merchant in the Alameda, there ensued between them an immediate scene; for this unlucky communication (given with all the coy triumph with which the plump old lady could invest it) was made to no other than the doctor's wife, who had just arrived from Dublin; and as it had never entered the head of Donna Dominga to inquire whether our unsuspecting medico was a Benedick--bond or free, as they say in Australia--a storm was the consequence.