CLEMENTINA gave a sigh of relief. Walking slowly, with the delightful sense of a difficult task happily accomplished, she made her way through the rooms, smiling right and left, and shedding amiable speeches on every friend she met. This splendid ball, the most magnificent perhaps ever given in Madrid by a private individual, was almost exclusively her work. Her father had provided the money, but the motive power, the taste and planning, had been hers. She received the congratulations which hailed her from all sides with a pleasing intoxication of flattered vanity. Happiness stirred a craving for love, its inseparable associate. She was possessed by a vehement wish to have a brief meeting, tÊte-À-tÊte, with Raimundo, to speak and hear a few fond words, to exchange a brief caress. She looked round for him among the crowd.

He had been wandering about the rooms all the evening, generally alone. He had looked forward to this ball with puerile anticipations of delirious and unknown pleasures, for he had never been present at any of these high festivals of wealth and fashion. The reality had not come up to his hopes, as must always be the case. All this ostentation, all the scandalous luxury displayed to his eyes, instead of exciting his pride, wounded it deeply. Never had he felt so completely a stranger in the world he had now for some months lived in. His thoughts, with their natural tendency to melancholy, reverted to his modest home, where, by his fault, necessaries would ere long be lacking; to his humble-minded mother, who had never hesitated to fulfil the most menial tasks; to his innocent sister, who had learned from her to be thrifty and hard-working. Remorse gnawed at his heart. Then, too, he observed that the young men of his acquaintance treated him here with covert hostility. Many of them he had begun to regard as friends; they welcomed him pleasantly, he played cards with them and sometimes joined in their expeditions, but he clearly understood at last that he was no one, nothing to them, but as Clementina's lover; and he could detect, or his exaggerated sensitiveness made him fancy that he detected, in their demeanour to him, a touch of scorn, which humiliated him bitterly. The passionate devotion which Clementina professed for him compensated no doubt for these miseries, and enabled him often to forget them, but this evening his adored mistress, though she did not ignore him, was necessarily out of his range. He endured the phase of feeling which a mystic goes through when, as he expresses it, God has withdrawn His guiding hand—intense weariness and the darkest gloom of spirit. He danced dutiously two or three times, and talked a little to one and another. Tired of it all, at last he withdrew into the quietest corner of one of the rooms, sat down on a sofa and remained sunk in extreme dejection.

Clementina sought him for some few minutes, and was beginning to be out of patience. She went into the card-room, and he started up to meet her with a beaming countenance. All his melancholy had vanished on seeing that she was in search of him.

"If you would like two minutes' chat, come to the Duke's study," she said, in rapid but tender accents. "It is on the right-hand side, at the end of the corridor." She went thither, and Raimundo, to save appearances, lingered for a few moments by one of the tables, watching the game.

Clementina made her way in and out of the rooms till she reached the corridor, and hurried to the study, a handsome room, so called for mere form, since the Duke always sat upstairs. It was a blaze of light, as all the other rooms were. As she went in, she fancied she heard a smothered sob, which filled her with surprise and apprehension. Looking about her, she discovered, in a deep recess, a woman lying in a heap on a divan, hiding her face in her handkerchief, and weeping violently. She went up to her, and recognised her by her dress. It was Irenita.

"Irene, my child, what is the matter?" she exclaimed, bending anxiously over her.

"Oh, forgive me, Clementina, I came here, hardly knowing what I was doing. I am so miserable;" and the tears streamed down her face.

"But what has happened then, my poor dear?"

"Nothing, nothing," sobbed the girl. There was a short silence. Clementina looked at her compassionately.

"Come," she said, leaning over her, "It is Emilio. He has done something to vex you this evening."

Irene made no reply.

"Do not break your heart over it, silly child. That will do nothing to mend matters. However great the effort, try to seem indifferent. That is the only way to prevent his despising you. Nay, there is a better way, but I do not advise you to try it; there are things one cannot advise. But still, even if you are in love with him, do not offer him your heart to wring, for God's sake! Never let him know how unhappy he makes you, or you are lost. Let him have his whim out, and he will come back to you."

Irene raised her face, bathed in tears.

"But have you seen—do you know what he has done? It is dreadful."

At this instant Clementina heard a step in the corridor, and suspecting who it might be, she hastily went to look out, saying: "Wait till I shut the door."

She was only just in time; Raimundo arrived at the moment; she put her finger to her lips, and signed to him to go away. Irene saw nothing of it.

When Clementina returned to her side, Irenita poured out, between sighs and tears, the grievances her husband had heaped upon her that evening. In the first place Emilio had chosen to come to the ball in a Hungarian costume. As soon as she came in, she had perceived that Maria Huerta also wore a Hungarian dress, and this, it must be owned, was a piece of insolence, which more than one person had remarked upon. Then they had danced together twice, and all the while, Emilio had never ceased murmuring in her ear. He had waited on her like a servant the whole evening, offering her ices and fruit with his own hands. Once, as he handed her a plate, their fingers had met. Irenita had seen it with her own eyes. Oh, it was monstrous! Irene only longed to kill herself. She would rather die a thousand deaths than endure such torments.

Clementina comforted her as best she could. Emilio loved her fondly, she was sure; only men liked to show off in this way and prove their powers of fascination. As their hearts were not engaged, there was nothing for it but to let them go for a while, and then they returned to the wife they really loved.

Clementina would not take her to the ladies' cloak-room to have her hair rearranged and to bathe her face; she led her up to the Duchess's dressing-room, and in a few minutes they came down stairs again. Irenita promised not to betray herself. When Clementina reported to Pepa all that had passed, the widow flew into such a fury that she was with difficulty hindered from rushing off to abuse her son-in-law.

"Well, it is all the same," she said, with a shrug. "If I do not scratch his face now, I will do it later. Come what may, I cannot allow that scoundrel to be the death of my daughter; and as for that bare-faced slut, she will not get off till I have spit in her face, and in her husband's ugly phiz, too! A pretty state of things!"

"Would it not be better to get rid of them altogether? Huerta is in office. See if you cannot get him packed off somewhere as Governor?"

"You are right. I will speak of it to Arbos at once; but as to that precious son-in-law of mine, I will pay him out this very night, or my name is not Pepa."

The Duke, surrounded by a group of faithful flatterers, was inhaling clouds of incense, growling out some gross witticism every now and then, which was hailed with applause. The ladies were the most enthusiastic in their admiration. Requena's genius for speculation dazzled them with amazement, as though they would like to calculate how many new dresses his millions would purchase. And he, usually so subservient, he—who, by his own confession, had reached the position he held by dint of kicks behind—lording it here among his worshippers, bullied them without mercy. His coarse jests were flung at men and women alike; he gloried in the brutal exercise of his power. And if these devotees were ready to humble themselves so patiently for nothing—absolutely nothing—what would they not have done if he had given largesse of his millions, if the golden calf had begun to vomit dollars.

In the card-room, whither he went after attending the retirement of their Majesties, a crowd of speculators literally blocked him in.

"How are the Riosa shares looking, SeÑor Duque?" one made so bold as to ask.

"Do not talk of them," grumbled the man of money, with a furious glare.

Llera's scheme had been punctually carried out. The Duke, after buying up a large number of shares, had set to work to produce a panic among the shareholders. For some months he had been employing secret agents to buy, and sell again immediately at a loss. Thanks to these tactics, the quotations had fallen very low. He was now almost ready for his great coup, buying up all he could get to throw them suddenly into the market, and then securing half the shares, plus one.

"Everything cannot turn out well," said the man who had addressed him, not without a smile of satisfaction. "You have always been so lucky."

"The Duke does not owe his success to luck," said a stock-broker bent on flattery, "but to his genius, his incomparable skill and acumen."

"No doubt, no doubt," the other hastened to put in, snatching the censer, as it were. "The Duke is the greatest financial genius of Spain. I cannot understand why he has not the entire management of the Treasury. If it is not placed in his hands, the country is past praying for."

"Well, if I tried to save it after the fashion of the Riosa Mining Company, it would be a bad look out for the Spaniards," said the Duke, in a sulky, mumbling voice.

"Why, is it such a rotten concern?"

"For the Government, no, damn it; but for me, after buying it at par, it does not seem to be much of a success."

And he cast all the blame of the transaction on his head clerk, that idiot Llera, who had insisted on having a finger in that pie, in spite of his, the Duke's, presentiments.

"Ah! a man like you should never trust anything but his instincts," they all declared. "When a man has a real genius for business—" And again the word genius was on the lips of every idolater of the golden calf.

Suddenly, at the door of the card-room, Clementina was seen, closely followed by Osorio, Mariana, and CalderÓn. All four looked disturbed and dismayed, and they all four fixed their eyes on Salabert, whom they eagerly approached.

"Papa, one word, one minute," said Clementina.

Salabert quitted the group, of which he was the centre, and joined the quartette in the further corner of the room.

"That woman is here," said his daughter in an agitated whisper, but her eyes flashed fire.

"It is scandalous," said Osorio.

"Some people have left already, and as soon as it is known every one will go!" added CalderÓn, more calmly.

"What woman?" asked Requena, opening his eyes very wide.

Clementina explained in a tone of passionate scorn—a woman whom the Duke was known to visit. It was Amparo.

"What!" he exclaimed, with well acted surprise. "That hussy has dared to come to this house? Who let her in? I will dismiss the door-keeper to-morrow morning."

"No. What you have to do is to dismiss her this instant!" cried Clementina, stuttering with rage.

"Of course, this instant! How dare she set foot in this house, and on such an occasion? But how did she get in? A ball which began so well!"

"She has a card, it would seem."

"Then she has stolen it, or it is a forgery."

"Well, well," said Clementina, who knew her father well enough to guess that he had been cajoled into giving the invitation, a bounty which had cost him nothing. "Settle the matter at once. She is in the drawing-room. You must go and explain to her that she must have the goodness to take herself off. Say what you choose, but at once. Before any one discovers her—above all mamma."

"No, my child, no. I know myself too well. I could not control my indignation. We must do nothing to attract attention. Go yourself—go, and get rid of her at once."

This was enough for Clementina. Without another word she swiftly returned to the drawing-room, her face pale and set, her lips quivering. In a moment she discovered the foe.

Certainly she was a handsome creature, magnificently dressed as Mary, Queen of Scots, and her beauty was fuel to Clementina's wrath. After wheedling Salabert to give her a card, it had occurred to the demi-mondaine that her appearance at the ball might cause a scandal, but she longed to display herself in the costly costume she had chosen, and taking a respectable-looking old friend as a chaperon, she went very late, just to walk once or twice through the rooms. It was a bitter surprise to find that even the men of her acquaintance, the members of the Savage Club, here turned their backs and walked away.

Her enjoyment, such as it was, was brief. Just as she was moving forward, with a triumphant smile, to make her longed-for progress through the rooms, she found herself face to face with Clementina, who, without the slightest greeting, holding her head very high, laid her hand on her shoulder, saying:

"Have the kindness to listen to me."

Mary Stuart turned pale, hesitated an instant, and then said with resolute arrogance:

"I have nothing to say to you. I came to see the master of the house—the Duke de Requena."

Margaret of Austria fixed a flashing eye on the rival queen, who met it without blinking. Then, bending forward, she said in her ear:

"If you do not come with me this instant I will call two men-servants to turn you out of this house by force."

The Queen of Scots was startled; still she was bold:

"I wish to see the Duke," she said.

"The Duke is not to be seen—by you. Follow me, or I call!" And she looked round as though she were about to act on her threat. The intruder turned very pale, and obeyed.

The scene had, of course, been witnessed by several persons, but no one dared follow the hostile queens. Clementina went straight into the cloak-room.

"This lady's wrap," she said.

Not another word was spoken. A man-servant brought the cloak. Mary Stuart put it on herself unaided, with trembling hands. She went forward a few steps, and then suddenly turning round, she flashed a look of mortal hatred at Margaret of Austria, who returned it with interest in the shape of a contemptuous smile.

It was foreordained of Heaven that the unhappy Queen of Scots should always be a victim—first to her cousin, Elizabeth of England, and now the Queen of Spain had turned her into the street. She found her duenna in the carriage; she had prudently made her escape at the beginning of the scene.

What moral purification Requena's rooms may have gained by the eviction of Mary Stuart it would be hard to say; but they certainly lost much from the Æsthetic point of view, for, beyond a doubt, she was lovely.

The ball was coming to an end. Preparations were being made for the final cotillon. The crowd had thinned; several persons went away before the cotillon—elderly folk for the most part, who did not like late hours. Among the young ladies there was the agitation and stir which always precedes this last dance, when the most ceremonious ball assumes an aspect of more intimate enjoyment. Art and fancy now step in to eliminate every sensual element and make the waltz an innocent amusement—a reminiscence of the fancy ballets which, in the fourteenth century, entertained the Courts of France and England. And to many a damsel this is the crowning scene of the first act in the little comedy of love she has begun to perform.

Pepe Castro, as we have seen, had laughed to scorn Clementina's suggestion that he should pay his addresses to CalderÓn's daughter; but it had not, therefore, fallen on stony ground. Though he talked and danced with other girls, he did not fail to ask her to waltz more than once. When the cotillon was being formed he went to Esperanza and asked her to be his partner, though he knew very well that it would be impossible, as the engagements for the last dance were always made as soon as the young people arrived. However, it fell in with the scheme he was plotting in his fertile brain. The girl had, in fact, promised the dance to the Conde de Agreda, but, on Castro's invitation, her desire to dance with him was so great that, with calm audacity, she accepted it.

The Duchess selected the Condesa de Cotorraso to lead the cotillon, and she took Cobo Ramirez for her partner. He was always welcome in a ball-room as a most accomplished leader of cotillons; and on this particular occasion he had held long conferences with Clementina as to the arrangements for this dance.

The circle of chairs was placed, and Pepe Castro went to lead out Esperanza, who proudly took his arm. But they had not gone two steps before Agreda intercepted them.

"Why, Esperancita, I thought you had promised me the cotillon?" he said in great surprise.

The girl's audacity did not desert her—the courage of a love-sick maid.

"You must, please, forgive me, Leon," said she, in a tone which the most consummate actress might have envied. "When I accepted you I quite forgot that I was engaged already to Pepe."

The Count retired, murmuring a few polite words, which did not conceal his annoyance. As soon as he was gone, Esperancita, frightened at the compromising interest in Castro which she had thus betrayed, began with many blushes to explain:

"The real truth is that I had forgotten that I was engaged to Leon," she said. "And as I had taken your arm—and besides, he is a most tiring partner."

Pepe Castro took no mean advantage of his triumph; his demeanour was modest and grateful. Instead of courting her openly, he adopted a more insinuating style, loading her with small attentions, establishing a tone of easy confidence, and showing her all possible fondness without breathing a word of love. Esperanza was supremely happy. She began to believe herself adored; fancying that the sympathy and regard which had always existed between Pepe and herself was at last turning to love. Her heart beat high with joy.

Ramoncita also was pleased at the substitution. Agreda had for some little time been particularly antipathetic to him, almost as much so as Cobo Ramirez, since he was beginning to be as jealous of the one as of the other. Pepe, on the other hand, he regarded as his second self, another and a superior Maldonado. All the affection Esperanza bestowed on Pepe he accepted as a boon to himself. So to see her on his arm was to him a touching sight, and as he went up to them to say a few insignificant words he actually blushed with satisfaction. Pepe made a knowing face, as much as to say: "Victory all along the line!" and the young civilian felt that he was advancing with giant strides to the fulfilment of his hopes and the apogee of his happiness.

The cotillon was a worthy climax to this most successful ball. The inventiveness of Cobo Ramirez, spurred by the magnitude of the occasion, enchanted the dancers by the variety and ingenuity of its devices; he kept them amused for more than an hour. A game with a hoop arranged in the middle of the room absorbed every one's attention and earned him much applause. He divided the gentlemen into two parties, who shot alternately with arrows from pretty little gilt bows at the hoop suspended by a ribbon from the ceiling. The winners were entitled to dance with the partners of those they had defeated, while the humiliated victim followed in their wake, fanning them as they waltzed. Then he had planned another figure for the ladies; the successful fair left the room and returned sitting in a car drawn by four servants dressed as black slaves. In this she made a triumphal progress round the room, surrounded by the rest. This and other not less remarkable and valuable inventions had placed the fame of the heir of Casa Ramirez on a permanent and illustrious footing.

As soon as the cotillon was ended the company left—it was a noisy and precipitate retreat. Every one crowded out to the vestibule and stairs, talking at the top of their voices, laughing and calling, each louder than the other, for their carriages. The extensive garden, lighted by electricity, had a fantastic and unreal effect, like the scene in a fairy cosmorama. The beams of intense white light, making the shadows look black and deep, pierced the avenues of the park and lent it an appearance of immense extent. Night was ended, the pale tints of dawn were already grey in the East. It was intensely cold. The young "Savages," wrapped in fur coats, were letting off the last crackers of their wit in honour of the ladies who stood waiting, where their rich and picturesque wraps glittered in the electric light. Horses stamping, footmen shouting, the carriage-wheels, as they slowly came round to the steps, grinding the gravel of the drive. Then there was the sound of kisses, doors slammed, loud good-nights; and the noise of the vehicles, as they drove off from the terrace steps, seemed by degrees to swallow up all the others and carry them off to rest in the various quarters of the town.

Pepe Castro had kept close to Esperanza and was murmuring in her ear till the last. The girl, muffled up to her eyes, was smiling without looking at him. When at last the CalderÓn's carriage came up they shook hands with a long pressure.

"I hope you will not forget us for so long as usual; that you will come to see us oftener," she said, leaving her hand in his.

"Do you really wish that I should call more frequently?" said he, looking at her as if he meant to magnetise her.

"I should think I did!" As she spoke she coloured violently under her comforter, and snatching away her hand followed her mother to the carriage.

Pepa Frias had said to her daughter:

"When we go, child, I want Emilio to come with me. I am in such a state of nerves that I cannot sleep till I have given him my mind. We must have no more scandals, you see; I am going to propose an ultimatum. If he persists, you must come back to me and he may go to the devil."

She was in a great rage. Irene, though she would have liked to object to this arrangement, for she adored her fickle husband, did not dare to remonstrate; she submitted. When they were leaving, Pepa addressed her son-in-law:

"Emilio, do me the favour to see me home. I want to speak to you."

"Hang it all!" thought the young fellow.

"And Irene?" he said.

"She can go alone. The bogueys won't eat her," replied Pepa tartly.

"Worse and worse," Emilio reflected.

And, in point of fact, Irenita, eyeing her mother and her husband with fear and anxiety, went off alone in her carriage, leaving them together.

As Pepa's brougham rolled away, Emilio, to disarm his mother-in-law, tried, like the boy that he was, to divert the lightning by saying something to please her.

"Do you know," said he, "that I heard your praises loudly sung by the President of the Council and some men who were with him? They admired your costume immensely, but yet more your figure. They declared that there was not a girl in the room to compare with you for freshness, that your skin was like satin, and smoother and softer every day."

"Good heavens, what nonsense! That is all gammon, Emilio. A few years ago, I do not say——"

"No, no, indeed; your complexion is proverbial in Madrid. What would Irene give for a skin like her mother's!"

"Is it better than Maria Huerta's?" asked she, in an ironical tone, which betrayed, indeed, no very great annoyance.

Pepa had, in fact, changed her plan of attack; she thought that diplomacy would be more effective than a rating.

"Listen to me," she went on, "I meant to give you a good scolding, Emilio; to talk to you seriously, very seriously, and say a great many hard things, but I cannot. I am so foolishly soft-hearted that I can find excuses for every one. You have behaved so badly to Irenita this evening, that she would be justified in leaving you altogether; but I do not believe you are as bad as you seem, for you are nothing but a perverse boy. I am sure you do not yourself appreciate the gravity of your conduct."

Pepa's whole sermon was pitched in the same persuasive key, and Emilio, who had expected a severe lecture, was agreeably surprised. He listened submissively, and then in a broken voice tried to exculpate himself. He had flirted a little to be sure with Maria Huerta, but he swore he did not care for her. It was a mere matter of pique and vanity. When his engagement to Irene was announced, Maria had been heard to say, in Osorio's house, that she could not understand how Irenita could bear to marry that ugly slip of a boy. He had sworn she should eat her own words—and so—and so—and that was all, on his word of honour, all.

So Pepa was still further mollified; and what wonder if the young fellow thought that this, and perhaps worse sins, were condoned by his profligate mother-in-law.