"What? You here? Have you left the Grange?" Don Pedro asked, with a penetrating glance.
"Definitely, no; I have the carriage below. I am going back to sleep."
"You must be dull there, eh?" asked Don Cristobal Mateo.
"In the day, no; I am very busy with agricultural occupations, with the mill, cattle, &c. But the evenings are very long."
Luis only came for the sake of seeing his daughter. Amalia had not allowed it until the child had partially recovered; then she was dressed as before, and she resumed her old rights. But not the affection. The charm was gone, because Luis hated her, especially through having had to submit through coercion. With the ardent passion full of love and mystery there had also mingled an attachment to the little creature. But the tortures that her mad anger inflicted on the little girl had made a gulf between them. The poor child, clad in rich clothes, wandered alone about the palace of the Quiñones without inspiring any one with tenderness. Amalia avoided her. The servants, ashamed of their unkind treatment, and sulky at the sudden change which put the foundling again above them, did not speak to her. The long martyrdom she had undergone and the terrible illness with which it terminated had made great ravages in her appearance. Her pale cheek was as transparent as mother-of-pearl; there was still a dark black circle from agitation and pain round her eyes. The count's heart contracted every time he saw her, and it cost him some effort to restrain his tears.
Amalia did not tell her lover of the imprudent anonymous letter she had sent to Quiñones. Fearing from her husband's excitability some serious consequence would ensue, she determined to get him off the scent, as it was not possible to restore his tranquillity. The course that seemed to her best to take was to remove his suspicions from Luis and put them on Jaime Moro. He was the only one who, by his position, age, and appearance could seem like a probable lover. She began by treating him before Don Pedro with particular partiality, picking him out from the other guests in a very conspicuous manner. She cast smiling, significant glances at him; she took pleasure in standing behind his chair when he was playing at tresillo and joking with him; she called him every minute to her on some pretext or other, and then kept him at her side with long whispering conversations in which her cheek came in close proximity with his. It was not so easy as it seemed to make a conquest of Moro, although it was only a make-believe. He was not at all churlish; on the contrary, he had a just reputation of being gentlemanly and courteous with ladies; but when ladies stand in the way of billiards or tresillo there is nobody six miles round so cross and uncivil. Amalia was a great bore to him when the tresillo players were waiting for him. Then his answers to her questions did not come readily; he smiled mechanically and gave frequent longing glances at the table where his companions were enjoying the delights of some trick with a good suit.
"Moro, sit here, we will have a chat together."
Moro trembled as if the world were coming to an end. He took a seat by the side of the lady with a face that was very long, not at all consistent with the passion that was supposed to consume his breast. The Grandee had paid little heed to these marks of favour and insinuating smiles of his wife. He looked at them with vacant eyes without any suspicion arising in his mind, which was entirely turned in the right direction. Nevertheless, Amalia was so persistent and seemed so engrossed, that the noble gentleman began to pay heed to those signs and to attribute some significance to them. The Valencian felt the pleasure of triumph. Her machinations were about to be realised. And to give an important, decisive stroke to her plot, she suddenly thought of a dangerous trick. She was seated in a corner with Jaime Moro at her side, quite in sight of Don Pedro. Moro was distrait as usual, and the wife of Quiñones had to make prodigious efforts to sustain the conversation; she smiled, she coquetted, she involved him in a mesh of honeyed phrases, which she greatly intensified with her smile so as to attract Don Pedro's attention.
"What is it? Are you looking at my bracelet?"
Moro had not noticed it.