The voice of the sick girl would break the spell.
“Eh, child, what are you thinking about? How romantic those girls brought up in the provinces are!”
The sharp and clear-sighted eyes of Pilar fastened themselves, as she said this, on Lucía’s face, where she descried a faint shadow, a sort of gray veil extending from the forehead and the temples to the circles under the eyes, and a certain sunkenness at the corners of the mouth. Her morbid curiosity was awakened, inspiring her with a desire to dissect for her pastime this simple heart. Her unerring woman’s instinct had revealed many things to her, and unable to content herself with a discreet guess, she desired to obtain the confidence of Lucía. It would be one more emotion for her to enjoy during her stay at the springs.
“I don’t know what I was thinking about—nothing,” answered Lucía, calling to her aid the most commonplace of excuses and the most common.
“Because it sometimes seems as if you were sad, pretty one; and I don’t know why you should be sad, for you are precisely in the most delightful part of the honeymoon. Ah, you are to be envied! Miranda is very agreeable. He has good manners, a good presence.”
“Yes, indeed; a very good presence,” repeated Lucía, like an echo.
“And he dotes upon you. Why, any one may see that. True, he goes about a good deal with my brother—but what would you have, child? All men are like that. The chief thing is that when they are with one they should be amiable and affectionate—and that they should not be jealous. No, that good quality, at least, Miranda has; he is not jealous.”
Lucía turned red as fire, and, stooping down, gathered a handful of dry leaves from the ground, in order to hide her confusion; then she amused herself crumbling them between her thumb and forefinger and blowing the dust into the air.
“And yet,” continued Pilar, “any one else in his place—No, see, if I were a man, I don’t know what I should have done—this thing of having a stranger escorting one’s bride for so many days—in that way, in such close company—and precisely when——”
At this direct and brutal thrust, Lucía raised her head, and fixed on her friend the ingenuous but dignified and severe glance which at times shone in her eyes. Pilar, skillful in her tactics, drew back in order the better to make her spring.