Her physical appearance had also undergone some change, and not for the better; the roses of her cheeks had paled a little; there were blue circles under her eyes; and though this made them more lustrous, it took away in large measure that sweet and picturesque expression that was characteristic of them.
Miguel and Maximina noticed these things, and had many times commented on them with sorrow; but there was one thing that attracted their attention above all and was the subject of long discussion between them: this was the invincible antipathy which Julia showed to her cousin Don Alfonso, and the eagerness with which she tried to bring him into the conversation, so as to blacken his character.
There seemed to be no defect which the Andalusian gentleman did not possess in his cousin's eyes, and she took a malicious delight in enumerating and exaggerating them. In this respect, she every day made some new discovery which she was sure to bring to her brother and sister.
At one time it was that he had brought a great lot of neckties, which to her mind proved that he squandered his money; then, again, she made all manner of ridicule of him, on account of the perfect battery of perfumes which he had on his toilet table; at times she called him lazy, because he never opened a book; at others, she ridiculed him for curling his mustache with the tongs; then she would complain of him because he would not take her to walk. But what made her most indignant and beside herself was his habit of not going to bed till two or three or even four o'clock in the morning, and because two or three times he had not done so till daylight.
"What does this man do after he leaves the theatre? Where does he go? The best way would be not to think about it. He is every way disgusting, repugnant!"
"It is too bad!" Miguel rejoined. "But there is no reason for you to be so exercised about it. Mamma invited him to spend a while at her house. When she does not receive him any longer, it will be all over."
Julia made no reply to this; but the next day she was again going assiduously out of her way to get her cousin "on the carpet," or, more accurately speaking, in the pillory.
"Do you know it seems to me that Julia is in love with Alfonso?" said Maximina to her husband, one night as they were going to bed.
"It seems to me so too," replied Miguel, with a deep frown; "and I am sorry for it, because Saavedra is a heartless, bad man, who would not marry her, and if he did marry her, would make her wretched.... And the worst of it is," he added after a pause, "mamma is as much in love with him as she is! Yesterday I tried to give her a hint about the impropriety of keeping him so long at her house, and she gave me one of her violent, impertinent replies, so that I have no more desire to touch on that subject, and yet I feel that it is very necessary."
There was a moment of silence, and Maximina exclaimed:—