Luis looked at her fixedly, getting more and more uneasy.
"But what a fool you are, Luis! How more than foolish! Egotism has so blinded your eyes that you cannot see what is before you. If you were twenty, this innocence might perhaps inspire me with pity, but at your age it only fills me with scorn and derision. To think that three or four insolent remarks on morality and conscience will suffice to make me contentedly accept the humiliation you impose upon me; to suppose that I, whom if you do not know, you ought to know, am going to consent to be cast away like an old rag, that I am to crawl like an enamoured slave at the feet of Fernanda, to serve her as a footstool when she mounts to her couch, is the height of stupidity and nonsense. Why don't you ask me to be bridesmaid at once?"
The count looked at her with dilated eyes full of anxiety and fear.
"So what I have heard of the tortures you have inflicted on our daughter is true?"
"Quite true! And you do not yet know all. Look here, I am going to tell you all, so that you may not say you are deceived."
Then, in a few incisive words, with a cruel satisfaction revealed in her voice, she put before him the fearful picture of the pain and misery suffered by the unhappy little creature during the last few months. The account was infinitely more shocking than the one Maria, the ironer, had given. The count, pale and overwhelmed, without making the slightest movement, looked the picture of despair. He soon covered his face with his hands, and so listened until the end.
"Oh, how infamous! oh, how infamous!" he groaned to himself.
"Yes, very infamous, but I hope to be more so. Have you heard all these infamies? Then they are nothing compared to what I shall do."
"You shall not do it, you wicked woman!" exclaimed Luis. "I would sooner strangle you with my own hands."
The Valencian rushed to the door.