A Wedding Trip by Emilia Pardo Bazán

Meantime the train continued on its way. The tears of the bride had ceased to flow, leaving scarcely a trace behind them, even in reddened eyelids. So it is with the tears we shed in youth -- tears without bitterness that, like a gentle dew, refresh instead of scorching. She began to be interested by the stations which they passed along the route and the people that looked in curiously at the door of the compartment. She put a thousand questions to Miranda, who explained everything to her, sparing no effort to amuse her, and varying his explanations with an occasional tender speech which the young girl heard without emotion, thinking it the most natural thing in the world that a husband should manifest affection for his wife, and betraying by not the lightest heaving of the chest the sweet confusion that love awakens. Miranda once more found himself in his element, tears having ceased and serenity and good-humor being restored.

Pleased with the result, he even thanked in his own mind one of the causes that had contributed to it -- an old woman carrying an enormous basket on her arm, who slipped into the compartment a few stations before Palencia, and whose grotesque appearance helped to call back a smile to Lucía's lips.