They went into the very room where Monina had lain ill with the croup. A woman was there prepared to take Pepa’s orders; she was the wife of one of the men about the place whom Pepa could trust, and as her own maids were at Madrid, she had got this woman to attend to Mona, who was at once put to bed. Teresa sat down by the bed, strictly enjoined to call out if any one came into the room; then Pepa led Leon into the next room.
“This is my own room,” she said, “no one can hear us here. And now for my secret. Sit down. Mercy how pale you are!—And I?”
“You are pale, too,” said Leon sitting down wearily.
“We reflect each other,” she said, trying to sweeten by a slight jest the gall they both had to drink. Leon was in no mood to notice the elegance of the bedroom, in which the magnificence of the decorations was such as, in the days of faith, was lavished on chapels and altars. He paid no heed to the handsome tables and wardrobes of ebony inlaid with marbles, to the monumental bed, also of ebony, which, with its vast spread of mattresses and pillows, covered with some curious dark-hued cloth of gold, looked singularly like a catafalque; he did not glance at the religious pictures in their silver frames—some like those that his wife had loved—nor at the elegant lamp that had just been lighted and shed a discreet and moon-like light in the room. At any other time its splendour would have attracted his attention, but not now.
“Your secret? What is your secret?” he said impatiently.
“My secret,” repeated Pepa sadly, “it is that we will fly, fly—you have only to consent, and we will go at once—we three, without being seen by a soul.”
“Fly! What mad folly!” he exclaimed, striking his forehead with his hand. “And at such a moment! Your conscience, my own, our very love itself rises up in protest against such an idea. Can you forget what has this moment taken place under this roof?—Good Heavens! You expect me to be devoid of the respect and consideration due to the dead! You ask me, when these hands have scarcely closed her eyes—! What should I be if I could consent! I should deserve to fall even lower than those calumniators who are so ready to call me María’s murderer.—I cannot conceive that you could love me if you should see me suddenly fall into such depths of baseness, if I were capable of anything so hideously iniquitous and immoral.”
Every word was a twist to the rope that was strangling the hapless Pepa. They both were silent for some time, without looking at each other. Suddenly she laid her hand on his arm, gazing at him with haggard eyes, and said in a voice he never before had heard from her:
“Very well—then I will go to my husband.”
“What! What do you mean?”