Both disappeared among the foliage. Dona Perfecta watched them until they were out of sight and then busied herself with the parrot. As she changed its food she said to herself with a contemplative air:
"How different he is! He has not even given a caress to the poor bird."
Then, thinking it possible that she had been overheard by her brother-in-law, she said aloud:
"Cayetano, what do you think of my nephew? Cayetano!"
A low grunt gave evidence that the antiquary was returning to the consciousness of this miserable world.
"Cayetano!"
"Just so, just so!" murmured the scientist in a sleepy voice. "That young gentleman will maintain, as every one does, that the statues of Mundogrande belong to the first Phoenician immigration. But I will convince him?"
"But, Cayetano!"
"But, Perfecta! There! Now you will insist upon it again that I have been asleep."
"No, indeed; how could I insist upon any thing so absurd! But you haven't told me what you think about that young man."
Don Cayetano placed the palm of his hand before his mouth to conceal a yawn; then he and Dona Perfecta entered upon a long conversation. Those who have transmitted to us the necessary data for a compilation of this history omit this dialogue, no doubt because it was entirely confidential. As for what the engineer and Rosarito said in the garden that afternoon, it is evident that it was not worthy of mention.
On the afternoon of the following day, however, events took place which, being of the gravest importance, ought not to be passed over in silence. Late in the afternoon the two cousins found themselves alone, after rambling through different parts of the garden in friendly companionship and having eyes and ears only for each other.
"Pepe," Rosario was saying, "all that you have been telling me is pure fancy, one of those stories that you clever men know so well how to put together. You think that because I am a country girl I believe every thing I am told."
"If you understood me as well as I think I understand you, you would know that I never say any thing I do not mean. But let us have done with foolish subtleties and lovers' sophistries, that lead only to misunderstandings. I will speak to you only in the language of truth.
Are you by chance a young lady whose acquaintance I have made on the promenade or at a party, and with whom I propose to spend a pleasant hour or two? No, you are my cousin. You are something more. Rosario, let us at once put things on their proper footing. Let us drop circumlocutions. I have come here to marry you."
Rosario felt her face burning, and her heart was beating violently.
"See, my dear cousin," continued the young man. "I swear to you that if you had not pleased me I should be already far away from this place.
Although politeness and delicacy would have obliged me to make an effort to conceal my disappointment, I should have found it hard to do so. That is my character."
"Cousin, you have only just arrived," said Rosarito laconically, trying to laugh.
"I have only just arrived, and I already know all that I wanted to know; I know that I love you; that you are the woman whom my heart has long been announcing to me, saying to me night and day, 'Now she is coming, now she is near; now you are burning.' "
These words served Rosario as an excuse for breaking into the laugh that had been dimpling her lips. Her soul swelled with happiness; she breathed an atmosphere of joy.
"You persist in depreciating yourself," continued Pepe, "but for me you possess every perfection. You have the admirable quality of radiating on all around you the divine light of your soul. The moment one sees you one feels instinctively the nobility of your mind and the purity of your heart. To see you is to see a celestial being who, through the forgetfulness of Heaven, remains upon the earth; you are an angel, and I adore you."
When he had said this it seemed as if he had fulfilled an important mission. 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.
A few moments later the daughter of Dona Perfecta Polentinos gave her cousin, amid happy tears, a tender glance followed by these words:
"I loved you before I had ever seen you."
Placing her hands in those of the young man she rose to her feet, and their forms disappeared among the leafy branches of an oleander walk.
Night was falling and soft shadows enveloped the lower end of the garden, while the last rays of the setting sun crowned the tree-tops with fleeting splendors. The noisy republic of the birds kept up a deafening clamor in the upper branches. It was the hour in which, after flitting about in the joyous regions of the sky, they were all going to rest, and they were disputing with one another the branches they had selected for sleeping-places. Their chatter at times had a sound of recrimination and controversy, at times of mockery and merriment. In their voluble twitter the little rascals said the most insulting things to each other, pecking at each other and flapping their wings, as orators wave their arms when they want to make their hearers believe the lies they are telling them. But words of love were to be heard there too, for the peace of the hour and the beauty of the spot invited to it. A sharp ear might have distinguished the following:
"I loved you before I had even seen you, and if you had not come I should have died of grief. Mamma used to give me your father's letters to read, and he praised you so much in them that I used to say, 'That is the man who ought to be my husband.' For a long time your father said nothing about our marrying, which seemed to me great negligence.
