“He has curious fancies and caprices. At one time he took the notion to work and entered a commercial house. After that he studied medicine and surgery, and I understand that he put Rubio and Camison in the shade. In Madrid he went to the hospitals to study for pleasure; at the time of the war he did the same thing. Do you know where I sometimes used to meet him in Madrid? In the Retiro, looking fixedly at the large lake. What is the matter, child?”
Lucía, with closed eyes and deathly pale, leaned back against the trunk of the tree that shaded the bench on which they sat. When she opened her eyes, the shadow on her temples was more marked, and her gaze wandered like that of a person recovering from a swoon.
“I don’t know—I sometimes seem to lose consciousness in that way. It is as if there were a sinking here,” she murmured, laying her hand on her heart.
“It is as I thought,” said Pilar to herself. “She has begun her capers early,” she added, in her own mind, cynically. Night was falling rapidly; a cold breeze stirred the foliage of the trees; the two friends, shivering, drew their wraps closer around them. At the same moment two dark figures appeared at the end of the avenue. They were those of Miranda and Perico, who manifested some surprise at finding Lucía and Pilar in the park at this late hour.
“A pretty way, a pretty way to cure yourself! The devil! you’ll be lucky if you don’t get an attack of pneumonia for this! get up, you crazy girl; come, come!”
Pilar rose, weak and pale, and took Miranda’s arm. Perico offered his to Lucía, whose natural vigor of constitution had by this time got the better of her momentary faintness.
“I doubt if she can take the waters to-morrow,” the latter said to her companion. “She was rather excited to-day, and now the reaction shows itself in fatigue.”
“I wager she would be strong enough, strong enough, if I offered to let her go to the Casino!”
“Ah, Periquillo of my soul!” cried the sick girl, whose fine ear had not lost a word of the conversation, “will you let me go, eh? What harm would that do me? Miranda, you intercede for me.”
“Once in a while—it might be good for her—it would serve to distract her.”