When Gonzalo saw her absorbed in the perusal of society papers, and heard her describe some court ball as if she had been present, he would exclaim, laughing:
"Do you know how this mania of yours would be defined by the medical faculty? 'Grandeur mad.'"
This offended her, because, like all mocking creatures, she was deeply wounded by ridicule leveled at herself.
The young man sometimes laughed with his sister-in-law at his wife's eccentricities, and at other times he became quite angry with her conduct, which he termed stupid and shallow; but Cecilia tried to appease him by reminding him of the youth and the impressibleness of Ventura.
"You will see," she said; "in a few months' time she will have given up all such nonsense."
Cecilia was his safety-valve, the confidante of all his matrimonial troubles, and he never failed to receive from her some useful advice or some consoling words that calmed his splenetic outbursts. He became so accustomed to these confidences that, if his sister-in-law were not at home after any difference he had with Ventura, he would put on his hat and run in search of her to the Promenade, to church, or wherever she might be.
The many hours that they spent together also favored these confidences. Ventura did not like going out, and as Don Rufo ordered the child fresh air, Cecilia undertook to accompany the nurse, and Gonzalo also joined the walks. The nurse with the baby went first, and the young man followed with Cecilia. It was during these long walks that he confided to her all his secrets, all his hopes and fears and joys. Sometimes when hearing her speak with so much perspicacity on serious matters, he exclaimed, with a want of gallantry to his wife: "What a pity Ventura has not your clever, sensible disposition!"
She, on the other hand, was as impenetrable to him as to everybody else. Whether it was because she had no secrets to tell, or whether it was due to her excessively reserved disposition, the fact remained that the eldest daughter of Belinchon carefully avoided talking of herself. Neither her joys nor her troubles were confided to anybody, and only a very sharp observer could have detected the emotions that moved her; and Gonzalo, in the simple egotism of a strong and healthy man incapable of much perspicacity, simply looked upon his sister-in-law as a passive, rational, cold being, admirable for giving advice and managing others, but incapable of feeling those rages, those joys, those insensate passions that assail weak natures like his own.
Nevertheless, he tried sometimes, in a joking way, to win her confidence. He knew that three or four young men in the town aspired to her hand, for he had come upon one or two walking up and down in front of the house, and in the theatre he had noticed them turning their opera-glasses in her direction; and although Gonzalo was somewhat disgusted at seeing that the attention was due more to the attraction of her money than to love, he tried to flatter her by alluding to her admirers.
She received the remarks in stony silence, with an absent sort of smile to conceal her thoughts, until she found herself obliged to turn the conversation.