years
old; he reads poems and writes plays, and is a thoroughly fine fellow. He
feels an almost filial affection for Don Julian and a wholesome brotherly
friendship for Teodora. They, in turn, are beautifully fond of him.
Naturally, he accompanies them everywhere in the social world of Madrid; he
sits in their box at the opera, acting as Teodora's escort when her husband
is detained by business; and he goes walking with Teodora of an afternoon.
Society, with sinister imagination, begins to look askance at the
triangulated household; tongues begin to wag; and gossip grows. Tidings of
the evil talk about town are brought to Don Julian by his brother, Don
Severo, who advises that Ernesto had better be requested to live in
quarters of his own. Don Julian nobly repels this suggestion as insulting;
but Don Severo persists that only by such a course may the family name be
rendered unimpeachable upon the public tongue.

Ernesto, himself, to still the evil rumors, goes to live in a studio alone.
This simple move on his part suggests to everybody--_todo el mundo_--that
he must have had a real motive for making it. Gossip increases, instead of
diminishing; and the emotions of Teodora, Don Julian, and himself are
stirred to the point of nervous tensity. Don Julian, in spite of his own
sweet reasonableness, begins subtly to wonder if there could be, by any
possibility, any basis for his brother's vehemence. Don Severo's wife, Dona
Mercedes, repeats the talk of the town to Teodora, and turns her
imagination inward, till it falters in self-questionings. Similarly the
great Gallehault,--which is the word of all the world,--whispers
unthinkable and tragic possibilities to the poetic and self-searching mind
of Ernesto. He resolves to seek release in Argentina. But before he can
sail away, he overhears, in a fashionable cafe, a remark which casts a slur
on Teodora, and strikes the speaker of the insult in the face. A duel is
forthwith arranged, to take place in a vacant studio adjacent to Ernesto's.
When Don Julian learns about it, he is troubled by the idea that another
man should be fighting for his wife, and rushes forthwith to wreak
vengeance himself on the traducer. Teodora hears the news; and in order to
prevent both her husband and Ernesto from endangering their lives, she
rushes to Ernesto's rooms to urge him to forestall hostilities. Meanwhile
her husband encounters the slanderer, and is severely wounded. He is
carried to Ernesto'