PAGE 14
The Guadalquivir, by Anthony Trollope
by
Cross with her! I certainly had no intention of being cross, but I had begun to think that she would not care what my humour might be. “Maria,” I said, taking hold of her hand.
“No, John, do not do that. It is in the church, you know.”
“Maria, will you answer me a question?”
“Yes,” she said, very slowly, looking dawn upon the stone slabs beneath our feet.
“Do you love me?”
“Love you!”
“Yes, do you love me? You were to give me an answer here, in Seville, and now I ask for it. I have almost taught myself to think that it is needless to ask; and now this horrid mischance–“
“What do you mean?” said she, speaking very quickly.
“Why this miserable blunder about the marquis’s button! After that I suppose–“
“The marquis! Oh, John, is that to make a difference between you and me?–a little joke like that?”
“But does it not?”
“Make a change between us!–such a thing as that! Oh, John!”
“But tell me, Maria, what am I to hope? If you will say that you can love me, I shall care nothing for the marquis. In that case I can bear to be laughed at.”
“Who will dare to laugh at you? Not the marquis, whom I am sure you will like.”
“Your friend in this plaza, who told you of all this.”
“What, poor Tomas!”
“I do not know about his being poor. I mean the gentleman who was with you last night.”
“Yes, Tomas. You do not know who he is?”
“Not in the least.”
“How droll! He is your own clerk–partly your own, now that you are one of the firm. And, John, I mean to make you do something for him; he is such a good fellow; and last year he married a young girl whom I love–oh, almost like a sister.”
Do something for him! Of course I would. I promised, then and there, that I would raise his salary to any conceivable amount that a Spanish clerk could desire; which promise I have since kept, if not absolutely to the letter, at any rate, to an extent which has been considered satisfactory by the gentleman’s wife.
“But, Maria–dearest Maria–“
“Remember, John, we are in the church; and poor papa will be waiting breakfast.”
I need hardly continue the story further. It will be known to all that my love-suit throve in spite of my unfortunate raid on the button of the Marquis D’Almavivas, at whose series of fetes through that month I was, I may boast, an honoured guest. I have since that had the pleasure of entertaining him in my own poor house in England, and one of our boys bears his Christian name.
From that day in which I ascended the Giralda to this present day in which I write, I have never once had occasion to complain of a deficiency of romance either in Maria Daguilar or in Maria Pomfret.