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Pepe entered the dining-room in a deplorable state of mind. Dona Perfecta was talking with the Penitentiary, as he entered, and Rosarito was sitting alone, with her eyes fixed on the door. She was no doubt waiting for her cousin. "Come here, you rascal," said his aunt, smiling with very little spontaneity. "You have insulted us, you great atheist! but we forgive you.
"And my cousin, Senorita Rosario?" "The senora over again!" said the peasant. "What more can I tell you of Dona Rosarito but that that she is the living image of her mother? You will have a treasure, Senor Don Jose, if it is true, as I hear, that you have come to be married to her. She will be a worthy mate for you, and the young lady will have nothing to complain of, either.
"I say that because a little while ago, when I was at the house, the mother and daughter seemed to be having a sort of reconciliation. Dona Perfecta was kissing Rosarito over and over again, and there was no end to their caresses and endearments." "Reconciliation! With all these preparations for the war you have lost your senses. But, finally, are you coming with me or not?"
Again I try to be impersonal. The complexion ranges through every quality from dark olive to pearly white; but yours, Rosarito, was like the very finest ivory, a perfect miracle of delicacy and brilliance; and the blood in the cheeks shone through with a rich, soft red. I used to think it was a colour by itself, not to be found on palettes, the carnation of your cheeks, Rosarito.
At the same instant Dona Perfecta rose abruptly from her seat, and, without saying a word, walked toward the house, followed by the Penitentiary. The others rose also. Recovering from his stupefaction, the young man was about to beg his cousin's pardon for his irreverence, when he observed that Rosarito was weeping.
"What I think," said Rosarito, looking at him with eyes full of affection, "is that you will not find yourself at home among us." "What do you mean by that?" "I don't know whether I can make myself quite clear, cousin. I mean that it will not be easy for you to accustom yourself to the society and the ideas of the people of Orbajosa. I imagine so it is a supposition." "Oh, no!
When Rosarito left him so abruptly the Penitentiary looked toward the garden wall, and seeing the faces of Licurgo and his companion, said to himself: "So the prodigy is already here, then."
At the same time when these words were written Rosarito was two years old. Pepe Rey, shut up in a school in Seville, was making lines on paper, occupied in proving that "the sum of all the interior angles of any polygon is equal to twice as many right angles, wanting four, as the figure has sides." These vexatious commonplaces of the school kept him very busy. Year after year passed.
Don Cayetano busied himself in giving various forms now rhomboidal, now prismatic to a little ball of bread. But Dona Perfecta was pale and kept her eyes fixed on the canon with observant insistence. Rosarito looked with amazement at her cousin. The latter, bending toward her, whispered under his breath: "Don't mind me, little cousin; I am talking all this nonsense only to enrage the canon."
Rosarito, overcome by the violence of her emotion, felt her scant strength suddenly fail her; and, half-fainting, she sank on a stone that in those pleasant solitudes served as a seat. Pepe bent over her. Her eyes were closed, her forehead rested on the palm of her hand.
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