Certain it is that these wild imaginings, aided by the sleepless hours passed at the sick girl’s bedside, and perhaps by another cause, also, dimmed the freshness of Lucía’s complexion, and tinged with gloom her once happy and tranquil disposition. Miranda, who, cut off from all other society, now sought that of his wife, was struck by the melancholy expression of her countenance, and thoughts, never fully set at rest since the unfortunate mishap of the wedding journey, sprung up again in his mind. This thorn, which pierced his vanity, the keenest of his feelings, to the quick, could never cease to rankle. Had Miranda’s nature been more amiable, he might have won by love the open and generous heart of the young Leonese, but it would seem as if some demon inspired him always to do exactly the opposite of what he ought to have done. He acquired the habit of speaking harshly to Lucía, and of treating her with a certain scorn, as if he never forgot her inferiority of station. He reminded her by covert allusions of her social position. He spied upon her every action, reproached her with the time spent in taking care of Perico’s sister, and, in short, adopted a system of opposition and tyranny, admirably adapted to succeed with weak or perverse women, whom it subjugates and charms. Lucía it brought to the verge of desperation.
A few days before the one fixed for Perico’s return, Pilar received from him a letter which she handed to Lucía to read. He announced in it his near return and gave at the same time some details of the fashionable life he was leading at the Castle of Ceyssat, and, among other pieces of news, mentioned the death of the mother of Ignacio Artegui, which Anatole had communicated to him, thinking it would interest him as concerning a compatriot. He added that the son had taken the body to Brittany, to the same old castle of Houdan, at which his childhood had been passed, for interment. Miranda was present when this paragraph was read, and noticed the rapid glance of intelligence that passed between Pilar and Lucía and the sudden pallor that overspread the face of his wife. Lucía left the house that afternoon and went to the church of St. Louis, in which she spent half an hour or so. She went back to the châlet, entered her room, where there were writing materials, wrote a letter, which she hid in her bosom, ran down-stairs and walked rapidly in the direction of the main street. Night was falling, the first lamps were being lighted, and the street urchins, the choirboys of civilization, were standing about on the pavement, crying out the names of the Paris papers which had just arrived. Lucía went straight toward the red lamp of the shop and dropped her letter into the wooden letter-box. At the same instant she felt her arm seized in a vise-like grip and turned around. Miranda was beside her.
“What is the meaning of this,” he cried, in a voice of suppressed anger. “You here, and alone,—what are you doing?”
“Nothing,” she stammered.
“Nothing! why, have you not just dropped a letter into the letter-box?”
“Yes, a letter,” she answered.
“Why did you lie, then?” exclaimed the husband, in furious accents, his mouth and chin trembling with jealous rage.
“I don’t know what I may have said when you hurt my arm,” answered Lucía, recovering her self-possession. “What is true is that I dropped a letter there just now.”
“And why did you not give it to me to post? Why did you come here yourself—alone?”
“I wished to post it myself.”