"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 passage, withdrew to the café. 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 Señora 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."