She rustled out on Don Pedro’s arm, whispering a few words in his ear which had the effect of a pistol-shot. As she parted from him at the carriage door, the lady fired a parting shot.
“I wished to warn you, that you might be on your guard. Resignation, Señor Marqués, Christian submission is what is wanting.”
Pepa meanwhile, lost in painful meditation, did not know what to think nor to what possible issue to look. Her spirit was torn by dark presentiments and wild conjectures. This news of a reconciliation had pierced her soul like a three-edged blade.
The quartette sat gloomily enough through the meal; to Pepa food was a nauseous mixture that she simply could not swallow, and her father hardly eat anything either. In the midst of her utter misery, Pepa, who had noticed her father’s strange look of worry and vexation since the day before, saw that this evening he was almost beside himself. Don Joaquin too, the partner of all the marquis’ secrets was irritable; what was happening?
“Ah!” said Pepa to herself, seizing on a notion sad enough in itself but at this moment a happy one for her; “My father must have suffered some great reverse of fortune; he is ruined perhaps, we shall be beggars.”
This idea, gloomy as it was, comforted her. Her father’s melancholy, in that case, had nothing to do with her personal griefs. What did she care for other interests, for all the money, all the bonds, all the securities, all the loans past, present or to come? That evening, Pepa might have passed close to all the stamped paper in the world piled up in a heap and set fire to on all four sides at once, and she would not even have cast a glance at the ruin.
After dinner, and when their friends had left them, Pepa and Don Pedro withdrew to the room where Monina slept just as the little angel, despoiled of her clothes, was being put into the rosy paradise of innocent dreams. Don Pedro took his grandchild in his arms, and kissing her with even more tenderness than usual, said:
“Poor little dove! you shall never fall into the clutches of that vulture!”
“What is the matter Papa?—What is the matter?” exclaimed Pepa, adding her more urgent embrace to the soft clasp of Monina’s arms round the marquis’ bull-neck.
“Nothing, my child. Nothing. Do not be uneasy, do not let yourself be agitated; trust in me, and I will put everything right.”