The waves softly washed the wall at his feet, and with his eyes fixed upon them he abstractedly followed their undulating motion. The seaweed growing in the depths moved with the motion of the water like the hair of a dead person. How quietly he could sleep down there! What peace in those transparent depths! What magic light below! Gonzalo gave ear for the first time in his life to the eloquent voice of Nature inviting him to repose in her maternal bosom--the siren voice sweet with irresistible charm, audible to unhappy creatures, even in their dreams, and so often leading them to place the cold muzzle of a pistol to their temples. It was for one minute, not more. His cheerful and sanguine temperament rebelled against this depression; his vitality, exuberant in his healthy const.i.tution, indignantly repudiated the pa.s.sing thought of death. An insignificant incident, the appearance of a little green light in the distant horizon, sufficed to divert his attention from these gloomy ideas.

"A ship coming in," he said. "What time is it?" (He drew out his watch.) "Half past ten, already! If it were a little earlier I would stop. I'll go and see if there's anybody at the cafe, for I should like a game of chapo."

He then took out a fine Havana cigar from his case, and smoking it with gusto he repaired to the Cafe de la Marina.

Almost at the same time a sad scene was being enacted in the Belinchon household. Dona Paula had remained all that day in bed, a prey to a dreadful pain in the left side, which caused her great difficulty in breathing. With the plebeian's invincible antipathy, nay terror, of science, she did not like to have a doctor, but she prescribed for herself some of the numerous remedies recommended by the many medicine women who came daily to her house to extort money from her with their vile, exaggerated adulations. So there was no end of embrocations of meat fat, cups of herb concoctions, the inside of fowls, etc., etc.

At last, by dint of these formidable therapeutics, the good lady improved in the evening enough to wish to get up; but Cecilia and Pablito would not hear of it. Both of them had sat with her for some time at her bedside; Cecilia especially had only left her long enough to make the embrocations and tisanes. Pablito made frequent excursions into the corridors, where, curiously enough, he nearly always met Nieves, from whom he extorted toll tax. Sometimes their suppressed laughter reached the room of the invalid, and she would smile kindly, and say to Cecilia:

"What silly creatures!"

For it never occurred to her that her adored son could be up to anything but hide-and-seek.

As the pain gradually left her, her mind was oppressed with the thought of telling her daughter the sad news which had made her so ill. She could only cast long and melancholy glances at the girl as she drew deep sighs of distress. She said several times:

"Cecilia, listen."

And each time she stopped, and merely asked for some trifle.

Night closed in. Venturita lighted the shaded lamp, and then withdrew.

Pablo, finding his mother better, and seeing no further opportunity of exercising his seignioral rights in the pa.s.sage, withdrew to the cafe.

Mother and daughter remained in the bedroom, the former in bed and seemingly tranquil, the latter seated near her. After a long silence, during which the Senora de Belinchon turned over in her head a thousand ways of opening a conversation which might lead naturally to the confidence she was obliged to make, she said:

"Have the girls worked well to-day?"

"I don't know, I have scarcely seen them," returned Cecilia.

"I think that if they go on at this rate they will finish too soon."

"Perhaps so."

Dona Paula was at a loss to know how to proceed, and remained silent.

At the end of some minutes she took up the thread afresh.

"The trousseau will be completely finished in this month of August, and I do not think you will be married for some months."

"Some months?"

"I think so. I believe Gonzalo does not wish the day to be so soon,"

said the senora with a trembling voice.

"Has he told you so?"

"Yes, he has told me so--I mean--no, he has not told me so--but I have guessed it from certain things--from some indirect remarks."

Dona Paula was here overpowered with a feeling of suffocation.

Fortunately Cecilia could not see the flaming color of her cheeks.

"I should like to know what those remarks were," returned the girl in a firm voice.

"Don't ask me, child of my soul!" exclaimed the senora, bursting into tears.

Cecilia turned deadly pale, and let her mother kiss the hand she held in hers, astonished at this emotion.

"What has happened, mama?--speak."

"A terrible thing--my heart--an infamous, infamous thing--I would rather die this moment than see the ruin and the misery of one of my daughters."

"Calm yourself, mama; you are ill, and you will do yourself great harm if you allow yourself to become so excited."

"What does it matter! I tell you I would rather die--I would give my life for you not to love Gonzalo--You do love him, dear heart? You love him deeply?"

Cecilia did not reply.

"Tell me, for G.o.d's sake, that you do not love him."

Cecilia was still silent; at the end of some minutes, trying in vain to give a firm tone to her voice, she said:

"Gonzalo declines to marry me, is that it?"

Dona Paula was now silent in her turn, and hid her weeping face in her hands.

Some minutes went by.

"Has he anything against me?"

"What could he have? Who could have anything against you, my lamb?"

"Then, if I do not please him, or he does not love me, what is to be done? It is better to be undeceived in time."

"Oh!" cried Dona Paula, breaking into fresh sobs, for under the apparent resignation of her daughter she detected a profound grief which she strove in vain to hide.

"What is to be done, mama? Is it not better for him to say so now than after we are married? Do I not know what a wretched life he would lead united to a woman he did not love? The pain that he causes me now, great as it is, is nothing to what I should feel if my husband did not love me. The pain would get worse and worse until I died, while now it may go, or at least be alleviated--Perhaps when he has gone away and I have not seen him for some time I shall gradually forget him--"

"But he is not going," returned the senora in confusion.

"If he does not go, patience--I will try not to go out, and I shall not see him."

"But, child of my soul, your misfortune is much greater! Gonzalo is in love with your sister."

Cecilia turned still paler, her face became livid, and she was silent.

Her mother again kissed her hand with effusion, and then drew her to her, and covered her face with kisses.

"Forgive me for torturing you like this. Much as you suffer, I suffer more. Yesterday evening your sister came and told me. Imagine my distress and grief. My first impulse was to kill her, for I was sure that she was most to blame. She gave me proof that they have been carrying on for some time, and showed me letters which made Gonzalo's faithlessness very clear to me. When I was convinced of his treachery I said that I would have n.o.body make a laughing-stock of my daughter, and Gonzalo should not set foot again in this house, that he was as bad as she; in short, I said all that came into my head. But this morning, this morning--I learned something still worse. I learned that your sister has gone farther than I can, or wish to, say. There is nothing for them but marriage, and that as soon as possible. Now you know why I have had this pain, which all but kills me, and would that it did so! Your father and I are both trapped--our hands are tied. If it were not so I would sooner be cut into little pieces than consent to this marriage. The infamous way this man has treated you will make me hate him all my life. Yes, all my life!" she added in an angry tone.

Cecilia did not answer. She sat with her hands clasped in her lap, her head hanging on her bosom and her horror-struck eyes fixed on the ground.