Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/309

. That might explain the tambourine, or even justify a pair of banderillas. But who orders jewels and flowers from Madrid?

. We entertain constantly. The daughter of a business friend is married to-day, to-morrow the wife of another arrives, and expects me to pay her attention.

. In that case, my dear, your friends have been marrying this season en masse, and you have returned every species of favor. A few more winters like this, and you will be ruined irreparably.

. What is this talk? Seriously, I am interested to hear. You meet all sorts of people; you pick up a great deal of gossip.

. For once all the different versions agree. The debacle was tremendous.

. Idle chatter; preposterous. Anything else?

. It seems that the husband, whom you had placed with the company, presumed upon your influence to abuse his subordinates. One of them, tired of his insolence, forgot himself one day, and so the story came out, to the huge delight of the bystanders. At first a duel seemed inevitable. You flew into the appropriate passion, she no doubt did the same, but the husband remained unmoved, as the best he could do was to resign his position, and he would not have done that had it not been for the repeated, urgent insistence of the stockholders, reinforced by your good friend Ramón. Are there any corrections which you desire to make? Or is the story complete as it stands?

. For once it does not depart very widely from the truth.

. But your poor wife…

. Suspects nothing.

. Or you prefer to believe that she does not, in which case one ground of remorse is eliminated. How like a