e, the question is this: Caballuco is--"

She could not go on for laughing.

"Is--I don't know just what," said Don Inocencio, "of one of the Troya
girls, of Mariquita Juana, if I am not mistaken."

"And he is jealous! After his horse, the first thing in creation for him
is Mariquilla Troya."

"A pretty insinuation that!" exclaimed Dona Perfecta. "Poor Cristobal!
Did you suppose that a person like my nephew--let us hear, what were you
going to say to him? Speak."

"Senor Don Jose and I will talk together presently," responded the bravo
of the town brusquely.

And without another word he left the room.

Shortly afterward Pepe Rey left the dining-room to retire to his
own room. In the hall he found himself face to face with his Trojan
antagonist, and he could not repress a smile at the sight of the fierce
and gloomy countenance of the offended lover.

"A word with you," said the latter, planting himself insolently in front
of the engineer. "Do you know who I am?"

As he spoke he laid his heavy hand on the young man's shoulder with
such insolent familiarity that the latter, incensed, flung him off with
violence, saying:

"It is not necessary to crush one to say that."

The bravo, somewhat disconcerted, recovered himself in a moment, and
looking at Rey with provoking boldness, repeated his refrain:

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yes; I know now that you are a brute."

He pushed the bully roughly aside and went into his room. As traced on
the excited brain of our unfortunate friend at this moment, his plan of
action might be summed up briefly and definitely as follows: To break
Caballuco's head without loss of time; then to take leave of his aunt in
severe but polite words which should reach her soul; to bid a cold adieu
to the canon and give an embrace to the inoffensive Don Cayetano;
to administer a thrashing to Uncle Licurgo, by way of winding up the
entertainment, and leave Orbajosa that very night, shaking the dust from
his shoes at the city gates.

But in the midst of all these mortifications and persecutions the
unfortunate young man had not ceased to think of another unhappy being,
whom he believed to be in a situation even more painful and distressing
than his own. One of the maid-servants followed the engineer into his
room.

"Did you give her my message?" he asked.

"Yes, senor, and she gave me this."

Rey took from the girl's hand a fragment of a newspaper, on the margin
of which he read these