"Yes, thanks, indeed! She will give them from the cemetery. A month hence she will be gone."
"Very well, and what is that to do with you? Are you her mother?"
They quarrelled three or four times like this, and the dwarfish sempstress's shamelessness and evil-mindedness always showed themselves.
At last being unable to endure such a spectacle with patience, Maria determined to go away. One day she went to the señora, and with the excuse that ironing was bad for her, she asked for her wages. Amalia was quite aware of the real reason, as she knew of her having complained of her cruelty, but she dissimulated as usual:
"Yes, girl, I understand that ironing is tiring for you. You don't enjoy much health. I also have not been well for some days. To contend all one's life with sickness, and now at the end to have this child, on whom all my hopes were founded, turn out so ungrateful and perverse! I don't know how I have patience."
Maria hesitated for an instant.
"Well, you see, señora—children will be children."
The wife of the Grandee saw that if she pursued the subject the ironer would say something disagreeable, so she cut short the remark, paid her her wages, and dismissed her affably.
This did not prevent the servant telling in confidence at a certain house where she went in service what was going on at the Quiñones. The news spread in the same confidence from one to another, and in a short time there was a considerable number of persons acquainted with the cruelties perpetrated on the child.
The Conde de Onis, to avoid the curiosity of the public, which worried him above all things, and also to be free of Amalia, to whom he had told nothing, had removed about a month ago to the Grange. He had not written to his old love, although he thought of doing so every day to tell her of his determination to marry. But so great was the terror with which the Valencian inspired him, that the pen fell from his hands every time he took it up to acquaint her with the fact. He thus let the days go by in this continual state of indecision, thinking with anxiety how enraged she would be, and like all weak natures, hoping that some unforeseen event would arrange a compromise. That way of breaking the connection without any quarrel or explanation whatsoever was quite in accordance with his character. He knew nothing of his child's tortures, nevertheless he felt such sudden anxiety when he thought of her that his nerves were quite shaken, and he walked up and down the room in visible agitation. The passionate love with which Fernanda had inspired him had made him forget Josefina a little. He occasionally thought of her with bitterness; he thought that even if he married Fernanda, he would not attain happiness if he could not see his child every day; although he quite understood that that would be impossible whilst she remained in Amalia's power. Then he thought of taking her away with him, and it gave him pleasure to imagine wild projects of getting hold of her, and flying with her and Fernanda to some remote and tranquil spot in the world.