All this she said with an air of so much sincerity that Doña Aurora’s good-will toward her increased, prepossessed in her favor as she already was by the respectable and decorous bearing of the girl, so different from the bold manners of the Madrid Menegildas. Only there was something in the girl’s story that was not altogether clear to her. There must be some mystery in all this. Before the door the driver was smoking his cigarette, while the hack, with drooping head and projecting lower lip, was dreaming of abundant fodder and delightful meadows.
“Child,” said Señora Pardiñas. “I am going to sit down in the carriage. As I am not as young as you are I feel tired standing, and my legs are bending under me. If you don’t want to go upstairs, come over to the carriage with me.”
The little Galician helped Doña Aurora to settle herself in the vehicle, and the latter when she was seated said:
“Tell me, if you were so greatly attached to your country how was it that you came here?”
Ah, this time there was not the slightest doubt of it; it was a blush, and a vivid blush, that dyed the girl’s cheeks. And when she answered one must be deaf, and very deaf, not to perceive that she stammered, especially at the first words.
“Sometimes—one has—to do what one’s heart least prompts one to do, Señora. We are children of fate. I was brought up by my uncle, the parish priest of Vimieiro. It was the will of God to take him to himself and I was left without a protector. To get one’s bread one must work. I was a queen in my own house; now I am a servant. God be praised, and may we never lose the power of our hands or our health.”
“Why did you not go out to service there?” persisted Señora Pardiñas, who had a keener scent than a bloodhound where a secret was concerned. And that the secret was there she could not doubt on seeing that it was not now a blush but a hot flame that passed over Esclavita’s face.
“I—I couldn’t find a place,” she answered, in choking accents. “And then, as everybody there knows me, I was ashamed.”
Doña Aurora Pardiñas reflected for some two minutes, and speaking gently to soften the harshness of the words:
“Let us see,” she said. “You can refer only to the Señoritas de Romera who—knew nothing about you before you went to their house. Isn’t it so? It would be well, then,—you will see that yourself,—if you could find some one here who knew you at home who would recommend you.”