The girl hesitated for an instant, and then said:
“The Señorito Gabriel Pardo de la Lage and his sister know who I am.”
“Rita Pardo? The wife of the engineer? I am very well acquainted with her. And you say that she knows you?”
The girl answered by raising her hand and shrugging her shoulders as much as to say, “Why, ever since I was born!”
“Well, child,” rejoined Señora Pardiñas, frankly, “I am sorry that you should leave the Romeras. You could not find a better house or better ladies.”
“I do not deny that,” replied Esclavita with greater emphasis than before, if possible; “only that I have told you the truth, Señora, as if I were talking to my dead mother or to the confessor. I was seized with homesickness, and if I hadn’t left them I think I should have lost my reason or have gone straight to my grave. I couldn’t eat. I would go off by myself to a corner to think. I grew paler and paler every day, and so thin that my clothes hung loose on me. At night I had fits of choking, as if some one was tightening a rope about my neck. But in spite of all that I was loth to say anything to the Señoritas. They saw it themselves, though, and they were the first to advise me, if I did not go back home, to look for a place with some family from there! ‘Child, you are so altered that you don’t look like the same person,’ were the very words they used.”
As she said this, Esclavita’s chin trembled like a child’s when it is making an effort to keep from bursting into sobs. Her eyes could not be seen, as she had cast them down, according to her wont.
“Calm yourself,” Señora Pardiñas said kindly. She was beginning to conceive an irresistible sympathy for this girl, whose bearing was so modest and whose heart was apparently so tender. How different she was from the impudent servants of Madrid, the gadabouts of the suburbs, shameless termagants who could not stay in any decent house. It was not two hours ago that Pepa, the house-maid, for a mere nothing had thrown aside all decency and scolded like a fishwoman. This little Galician might have had—well, some slip—for the reasons she gave for leaving her native place did not seem all clear; but her whole appearance was so—well, so like that of an honest woman—God alone knew how the poor thing had been tempted.
“‘See,’ she said, putting her head out of the carriage door.”