“And it served you properly, señor,” said Donna Maria, laughing; “you have no right to go about with all those rich ornaments upon you.”

“Oh! quite properly; indeed, I make no complaint; and I must beg your friend to understand, and his friend also, how grateful I am for their solicitude as to my pecuniary welfare. They were inclined to be severe on me for being so extravagant in such trifles. I was obliged to explain that I had no wife at home kept without her proper allowance of dresses in order that I might be gay.”

“They are foreigners, and you should forgive their error,” said she.

“And in token that I do so,” said the Marquis, “I beg your friend to accept the little ornament which attracted his attention.” And so saying, he pulled the identical button out of his pocket, and gracefully proffered it to me.

“I shall carry it about with me always,” said I, accepting it, “as a memento of humiliation. When I look at it I shall ever remember the folly of an Englishman and the courtesy of a Spaniard,” and as I made the speech I could not but reflect whether it might, under any circumstances, be possible that Lord John Russell should be induced to give a button off his coat to a Spaniard.

There were other civil speeches made, and before we left the tower the Marquis had asked me to his parties, and exacted from me an unwilling promise that I would attend them. “The señora,” he said, bowing again to Maria, “would, he was sure, grace them. She had done so on the previous year; and as I had accepted his little present I was bound to acknowledge him as my friend.”

All this was very pretty, and, of course, I said that I would go, but I had not at that time the slightest intention of doing so. Maria had behaved admirably; she had covered my confusion, and shown herself not ashamed to own me, delinquent as I was; but, not the less, had she expressed her opinion, in language terribly strong, of the awkwardness of which I had been guilty, and had shown almost an aversion to my English character. I should leave Seville as quickly as I could, and should certainly not again put myself in the way of the Marquis D’Almavivas. Indeed, I dreaded the moment that I should be first alone with her, and should find myself forced to say something indicative of my feelings—to hear something also indicative of her feelings. I had come out this morning resolved to demand my rights and to exercise them—and now my only wish was to run away. I hated the Marquis, and longed to be alone that I might cast his button from me. To think that a man should be so ruined by such a trifle!

We descended that prodigious flight without a word upon the subject, and almost without a word at all. She had carried herself well in the presence of Almavivas, and had been too proud to seem ashamed of her companion; but now, as I could well see, her feelings of disgust and contempt had returned. When I begged her not to hurry herself, she would hardly answer me; and when she did speak her voice was constrained and unlike herself. And yet how beautiful she was! Well, my dream of Spanish love must be over. But I was sure of this: that having known her, and given her my heart, I could never afterwards share it with another.

We came out at last on the dark, gloomy aisle of the cathedral, and walked together without a word up along the side of the choir, till we came to the transept. There was not a soul near us, and not a sound was to be heard but the distant, low pattering of a mass, then in course of celebration at some far-off chapel in the cathedral. When we got to the transept Maria turned a little, as though she was going to the transept door, and then stopped herself. She stood still; and when I stood also, she made two steps towards me, and put her hand on my arm. “Oh, John!” she said.

“Well,” said I; “after all it does not signify. You can make a joke of it when my back is turned.”

“Dearest John!” —she had never spoken to me in that way before—“you must not be angry with me. It is better that we should explain to each other, is it not?”