Fernanda never hesitated for an instant. She saw him, and knew him so well, that she even noticed the marks that time and care had left upon his face. He seemed older, and she thought she saw silver streaks in his long red beard. At the same time she was agreeably impressed by the suffering, anxiety, and sadness that she read in the eyes that rested an instant upon her. The memory of her old fiancé had always remained green in the depths of her heart. Neither treachery, scorn, nor the thousand distractions to which she resorted in her frivolous, restless, Parisian life had been able to destroy it. If she had found happiness in the power of wealth and health, she would not have been open to that soft wave of sympathy which delighted her for an instant. In such perverse pleasure in the count's sadness there was the bitterness of the slighted woman, but there was also a certain breezy, vapourous feeling like hope, which sang and laughed in her soul, and dissipated the black thoughts which had accumulated in her mind. It was necessity, and not will which obliged her to return to Lancia where she had vowed never again to set her foot. Her husband had made a will in her favour, which his brothers had disputed, and the consequence was a lawsuit, which was soon given in her favour.
She came accompanied by an old servant of her father's, whom she had made her dame de compagnie, and a majordomo. From Madrid she had telegraphed to a cousin who, with Manuel Antonio, two of the daughters of Mateo, and a few more friends were awaiting her arrival on the badly paved Place of the Post, where the diligence stopped. And then followed embraces, huggings and kisses, questions, exclamations and tears. The offended heiress of Estrada-Rosa never thought she could have felt so much pleasure in returning to her native place. In the ardour of their affection, her friends almost carried her off to her house. There they all left her with the exception of Emilita Mateo, to whom Fernanda signed to remain. Then the two friends, with their arms round each other's waists, went slowly up that wide polished staircase which Fernanda had so often trod as a child with bare feet. They soon shut themselves in the old library of Estrada-Rosa to enjoy an hour of sweet confidences. Amid smiles, kisses, and vows of eternal friendship the history of those five years was told. Fernanda talked of her late husband in a tone that lapsed from compassionate to depreciative, for she had lived with him in a state of antagonism of ideas and tastes that had kept them apart. She had been neither happy nor miserable. They had been five years of excitement, filled with crowded streets, splendid theatres, magnificent hotels, gorgeous dresses, many acquaintances, and not a single friend. Her husband devoted himself to the satisfaction of her fancies like some wild bear who obeys the whip of the keeper with growls. They had had one child that had died at four months old.
The skittish Emilita was very unhappy in her marriage. Nuñez had turned out a fast man. Fernanda knew something about it, but not much. It is not easy to go into certain significant details in letters. He began very well, but then he went wrong with bad companions; at first he took to gambling, then to drinking, then he went after women, and it was this last that Emilita felt so deeply. She had willingly pardoned him all the rest. She had borne his coming home drunk in the early hours of the morning, she had pawned her earrings and her mantilla for him, but she could not stand seeing him going into the house of a bad woman who lived in the Calle de Cerrajerías. On saying this the Pensioner's daughter burst into a torrent of tears. The sight of her trouble was the more distressing, as a piquant sort of cheerfulness had always been her peculiar characteristic. Fernanda caressed her tenderly and wept with her. After some minutes silence she said:
"But do you go on loving him?"
"Yes, girl, yes," she exclaimed with rage, "I cannot help it. I am more and more blindly in love."
"Well, por Dios! Your poor father must be very much put out."
"As you can imagine! And the worst of it is," she added, weeping bitterly, "that now he has returned to his mania against the army. He says awful things about soldiers! Yes, yes, awful! Directly I enter the house he begins going on, on purpose to annoy me. My sisters support him. They call us idle good-for-nothings, and say that the contingent ought to be reduced."
Here the tender heart of the wife of Nuñez was torn with sobs. Fernanda, who had also cried at the sight of her affliction, could not help smiling.
"Your sisters, too?"
"I should think so! They all—they all want it to be reduced!"