would find out how this might be. A man who proposes to take a woman
to his bosom as his wife, has a right to ask for information--ay, and
to receive it too. It flashed upon my mind at this moment that Donna
Maria was well enough inclined to come to me as my wife, but --. I
could hardly define the "buts" to myself, for there were three or
four of them. Why did she always speak to me in a tone of childish
affection, as though I were a schoolboy home for the holidays? I
would have all this out with her on the tower on the following
morning, standing under the Giralda.

On that morning we met together in the patio, soon after five
o'clock, and started for the cathedral. She looked beautiful, with
her black mantilla over her head, and with black gloves on, and her
black morning silk dress--beautiful, composed, and at her ease, as
though she were well satisfied to undertake this early morning walk
from feelings of good nature--sustained, probably, by some under-
current of a deeper sentiment. Well; I would know all about it
before I returned to her father's house.

There hardly stands, as I think, on the earth, a building more
remarkable than the cathedral of Seville, and hardly one more grand.
Its enormous size; its gloom and darkness; the richness of
ornamentation in the details, contrasted with the severe simplicity
of the larger outlines; the variety of its architecture; the glory of
its paintings; and the wondrous splendour of its metallic decoration,
its altar-friezes, screens, rails, gates, and the like, render it, to
my mind, the first in interest among churches. It has not the
coloured glass of Chartres, or the marble glory of Milan, or such a
forest of aisles as Antwerp, or so perfect a hue in stone as
Westminster, nor in mixed beauty of form and colour does it possess