Nevertheless, one night, on taking an affectionate leave of his sister-in-law, when retiring to rest, after much circumlocution and turning crimson, he asked after Ventura.
"What news is there of her?"
Cecilia gave him a chilly answer in as few words as possible.
Poor Gonzalo! If he had known that the treacherous wife, after whom he was asking, far from repenting, was furious against her family, covering them all with opprobrium, and threatening to go off with the first man at hand as soon as she came out of retreat, and shocking the Superior of the Convent with her language and pride.
From that day Gonzalo lost his aversion of referring to his wife, asking sometimes after her, and liking to mention her in conversation, but Cecilia still maintained the cold tone of her replies, quickly changing the subject.
What Don Rosendo had feared from the letters from Ocaña at last happened.
The Superior of the Convent informed him one day that Ventura had escaped from the retreat, and, according to all reports, it was with the Duke of Tornos.
"The great humanitarian" (as he was termed by "The Light," on a certain occasion) received the news with stoical fortitude. In fact, what did any purely individual sorrow signify in comparison with universal sorrow in the slow and sure march of humanity to its destiny? He had recently read a celebrated pamphlet called, "The March of the World," from the pen of a French writer, and, with his brain refreshed and illuminated with its grand historical synthesis, he found strength to bear the blow.
Nevertheless, he tried to keep the news from his son-in-law, as he had not the same confidence in the loftiness of his spirit and the width of his views. It was therefore kept secret for some days, but suddenly it became current news in the town, without any one knowing who started it. Gonzalo, who always went early in the morning to the Club, read it in a paragraph in "The Youth of Sarrio," which was as infamous as it was hypocritical.
"It is said in the town," it ran, "that a lady, the heroine of a certain romantic drama, enacted not long ago, has fled with her lover from the asylum in which her family had secluded her. We shall be sorry if this report be true, as it will affect certain persons who are well known and much esteemed in Sarriensan society."