"Because I don't feel well," he returned, with the same smile.
"You really feel ill?" replied the girl, opening her eyes wide with an innocent expression.
"Oh, come!" she exclaimed, with a laugh, as if that were of no consequence; "then I will shut them."
"Oh, no; don't shut them, or I shall be much worse."
"Then I will go," she said, rising from her chair.
"That would kill me, my girl! Do you know why I am ill? It is because it kills me not to be able to kiss your eyes."
"Goodness!" exclaimed Venturita, with a burst of laughter. "How bad it must be! I am sorry not to be able to cure you."
"Thank you. Let me kiss your hair, then."
"Let me kiss something of yours. See, you are doing me a lot of harm."
"Kiss this glove," said the girl, laughing, and taking one from the toilet table. Gonzalo seized it, and kissed it passionately several times.
The reader, who may have denounced Gonzalo in his heart as a disloyal, perfidious fellow, or at least weak, and maybe deserving the appellation of "a disagreeable character," as the critics say when the people in novels are not all as heroic and as clever as might be wished, must imagine himself in that little nest, as full of perfume as the chalice of a magnolia, with the youngest daughter of the Belinchons, dressed in a blue-ribboned peignoir, revealing a good part of her neck, like roses and milk, with her shining blue eyes on him, and a soft, melodious voice that moved his very soul, and if the girl gave him a glove, saying "kiss it," he must think whether he could refrain from doing so.
"You must calm yourself, Gonzalo," she said, with a smile that would have bewitched St. Anthony.
"Very well. Now we must talk seriously and review the situation."
"After what you said to me three days ago I did think that before now you would have said something to mama, or papa, or that you would have written. But no; you not only let the time slip by, so that things get worse every day, but I see that you are more affectionate and attentive to Cecilia than ever."
"Yes; I saw you a moment ago through the keyhole of the room. Nothing escapes me. Now this is very bad if you don't love her; and if you do love her, it is treating me badly."
"Are you not yet sure that you alone possess my heart?" said the young man, raising his eyes toward her.