When, late that evening, she sat with Jose under the vines, the air
about them heavy with jasmine and orange and lemon blossoms, she asked
a great many questions about the bull-fight. It must be a grand thing to
see--so many people, such gay colors, such music. Jose could describe it
better than Manuel. He must tell her all about it.

He described it as well as he could, and in spite of his slow speech
made quite an exciting picture for her; or rather she found it exciting,
as she found all things just now in their novelty. Before Jovita and she
had arrived, while he was making his small preparations for them, he
had seen a bull-fight or so, and no point of detail had escaped his
deliberate mind. He always remembered things--Jose.

"But you shall go," he said; "you shall go and see for yourself the very
next time. It comes next week. We will go and take Jovita."

Pepita clapped her hands for joy. She sprang up and danced a few steps
in her childish delight.

"That will be happiness," she said. "What happiness! Perhaps the king
and queen will be there!"

"You will see Sebastiano," said Jose, seriously.

"I do not care for Sebastiano," cried Pepita, petulantly.

"You do not care," said Jose, in blank amaze, "for Sebastiano? You do
not care?"

Pepita shrugged her shoulders.

"They talk too much of him," she answered, "and he is too vain. He
thinks all women are in love with him, and that if a girl comes from the
country she knows nothing, and will die of love if she only sees him."

"I did not know that," said Jose, staring. "I never heard them say so.
They call him a fine fellow."

"I never heard them say so," Pepita answered scornfully; "but I know it.
I am sure he is a fool," which remark caused Jose much bewilderment, and
led him to reflect long and deeply, but did not, however, lead him to
any conclusion but that Pepita was ruled by one of her caprices. He was
rather afraid to admit that he himself had enjoyed the magnificent
honor of seeing this great hero out of the ring; that through a quite
miraculous favor he had even been allowed to speak to him and to
hear him speak as he stood, the centre of a circle of admirers in a
wine-shop. He had been saving this to tell Pepita, but now he thought it
well to save it a little longer.

But when the day of the bull-fight arrived it was not possible to
conceal it.

Ah! the wonders, the splendors of that day from the first hour! At its
very dawning Pepita w