perfume that enthralls.

In his strange situation, spending days in childish games with a young
girl who aroused in him nothing more than the bland sense of fraternal
comradeship, and nights in sad and sleepless recollection, the one thing
that pleased him was intimacy with his mother. Peace had been restored
to the home. He could come and go without being conscious of a pair of
eyes glaring upon him and without hearing words of indignation stifled
between grating teeth.

Don Andres and his friends at the Club kept asking him when the wedding
would take place. In presence of "the children" dona Bernarda would
speak of alterations that would have to be made in the house. She and
the servants would occupy the ground floor. The whole first story would
be for the couple, with new rooms that would be the talk of the
city--they would get the best decorators in Valencia! Don Matias treated
him familiarly, just as he had in the old days when he came to the
_patio_ to get his orders from don Ramon and found Rafael, as a child,
playing at his father's feet.

"Everything I have will be for you two. Remedios is an angel, and the
day I die, she will get more than my rascal of a son. All I ask of you
is not to take her off to Madrid. Since she is leaving my roof, at least
let me be able to see her every day."

And Rafael would listen to all these things as in a dream. In reality he
had not expressed the slightest desire to marry; but there was his
mother, taking everything for granted, arranging everything, imposing
her will, accelerating his sluggish affection, literally forcing
Remedios into his arms! His wedding was a foregone conclusion, the topic
of conversation for the entire city.

Sunk in this sadness, in the clutch of the tranquillity which now
surrounded him and which he was afraid to break; weak, as a matter of
character, and without will power, he sought consolation in the
reflection that the solution his mother was preparing was perhaps for
the best.

His friendship with Leonora had been broken forever. Any day she might
take flight! She had said so very often. She would be going very
soon--when the blossoms were off the orange-trees! What would be left
for him then ... except to obey his mother? He would marry, and perhaps
that would serve as a distraction. Little by little his affection for
Remedios might grow. Perhaps in time he would even come to love her.

Such meditations brought him a little calm, lulling