His wife, Doña Paula—but why does her arrival excite so much talk in the theatre? The good lady, hearing it, trembles, looks confused, and, being unable to collect herself sufficiently to take off her cloak by herself, she is relieved of it by her daughter, who says in her ear:
"Sit down, mama."
Doña Paula sits down, or, to speak more correctly, she drops into a seat, and casts an anxious look at the audience, while her cheeks are suffused with crimson. In vain she tries to collect and calm herself, but the more she tries to keep the blood from rushing to her face the more it mounts to that prominent position.
"Mama, how red you are!" said Venturita, her younger daughter, trying not to laugh.
The mother looked at her with a pained expression.
"Hush, Ventura, hush," said Cecilia.
Doña Paula then murmured: "The child delights in upsetting me," and nearly burst into tears.
At last the audience, wearied of tormenting her with their glances, smiles, and whispers, turned their attention to the stage. Doña Paula's distress gradually diminished, but the traces remained for the rest of the evening.
The cause of the excitement was the velvet mantle, trimmed with fur, that the good lady had donned. It was always like this whenever she appeared for the first time in any fine article of apparel. And this for no other reason than because Doña Paula was not a lady by birth.
She had belonged to the cigarette-maker class. Don Rosendo had made love to her when she was quite a young girl, and then came the birth of Pablito. However, Don Rosendo let five or six years elapse without marrying, not wishing to hear of matrimony, but continuing to pay court to her and assisting her with money, until finally, vanquished more by the love of the boy than the mother, and more than all by the admonitions of his friends, he decided to offer his hand to Paulina.