"
"Oh! you have observed that," Gerald Burke replied with a laugh.
"Your eyes are sharper than I gave you credit for, Master Geoffrey.
Yes, that would set me on my legs without doubt, for Donna Inez
is the only daughter and heiress of the Marquis of Ribaldo; but
you see there is a father in the case, and if that father had the
slightest idea that plain Gerald Burke was lifting his eyes to his
daughter it would not be many hours before Gerald Burke had several
inches of steel in his body."
"That I can imagine," Geoffrey said, "since it is, as I learn from
my acquaintances among the lackeys, a matter of common talk that
the marquis intends to marry her to the son of the Duke of Sottomayor."
"Inez hates him," Gerald Burke said. "It is just like my ill luck,
that instead of being drowned as most of the others were, he has
had the luck to get safely back again. However, he is still ill,
and likely to be so for some time. He was not so accustomed to
starving as some of us, and he suffered accordingly. He is down at
his estates near Seville."
"But what do you think of doing?" Geoffrey asked.
"That is just what I am asking you."
"It seems to me, certainly," Geoffrey went on, "that unless you
really mean to run off with the young lady -- for I suppose there
is no chance in the world of your marrying her in any other way --
it will be better both for you and her that you should avoid for
the future these meetings in the gardens or elsewhere, and cast your
thoughts in some other direction for the bettering of your fortunes.
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