He traced the lines of this letter with a trembling hand, and before finishing it, tears rose to his eyes.
CHAPTER XV
JOSEFINA SLEEPS
The noble Grandee easily guessed the author of his disgrace. As soon as he read the anonymous letter and recovered his self-command, his suspicions fell upon the Conde de Onis. In this he was only influenced by the likeness that he now clearly saw between him and the foundling. For either his excessive pride had blinded his eyes, or else because Amalia had known how to keep him deceived, he had never noticed anything between them beyond a cool, conventional friendship at which nobody could have taken umbrage. The same pride arrested the course of his bitter thoughts by making the most of this consideration. Why give any importance to what an anonymous letter said? Why not suppose it was a vile calumny by which some enemy tried to envenom his existence? But the dart had gone so deep into his heart that he could not pull it out. All the considerations invented by his inclination could not destroy the perfect conviction that, without his knowing how, had taken shape in his brain. Sundry details, unnoticed at the time, soon stood out and guided him like lighted torches. The first of all was naturally the illness of his wife simultaneous with the appearance of the child. He recalled her strange aversion to having a doctor to see her; then the indulgence and extreme attention lavished on the child. He also recollected the visits that at one time his wife made to the Grange on the pretext of getting plants. There was no circumstance connected with the count's friendship and the finding of the child that he did not turn over and weigh thoughtfully. He became silent and meditative. The hard look of his piercing eyes was always fixed upon Amalia directly she came into the room. Sometimes he had the child fetched on some pretext or another, and looked at her for a long time trying to decipher in the lines of her face the enigma of her existence.
Amalia saw all this, and read the thoughts of her husband like an open book.
"When is Luis to be married?" asked the Grandee one day in an assumed, careless tone.
"They say it will be some time yet. He has to arrange I don't know how many matters before going to Madrid," she replied, with the greatest calmness.
"Is he still at the Grange?"
"Yes, always; he only comes in sometimes of an evening, according to what he told me one day when I met him in Barrosa's shop."
The very next evening the count appeared at the party.