"What makes you say that?" he asked, greatly astonished. "You Know that your will is my law since your mother died. You are rich and can satify all your whims, and I shall not oppose you. Are you dissatisfied with your dressmaker? Do you want a new dress? Tell me, my dear."
"Oh," said she, lifting her eyes to heaven, "prose, nothing but prose all the time, which may satisfy commonplace minds, but not me."
"What is the matter, then?" asked her father.
"Just fancy what it may be," said Ernestina.
"Ut is not easy, my child, to imagine what the whims of a petted daughter may be. Ah, don't get angry if I call them whims. What else are they?"
Finally Ernestina said with a deep sigh:
"It ought to be called a strong passion."
"Passion!" repeated Señor Albamonte, looking at her attentively. "What do you mean by a passion?"
She raised her eyes in surprise. She could not understand that there could be anyone in the world who did not know what a passion is. But she did not know how to explain herself clearly, so she said:
"Passion is something which is felt but cannot be explained. It is two minds in one; it is the very existence of our souls. Alas! to love is to die!"
"Heigh-ho! I am as much in the dark as ever," remarked her father.
"Ah," she said, "have you never loved?"
"Certainly," answered her father. "I loved your mother as the apple of my eye, and we
