The commandant, dressed in the costume of a peasant, unceremoniously entered the room with his niece, who was the apple of his eye, his arm encircling her waist as if he was going to dance a waltz with her. In the salutation he exchanged with his sister, however, Doña Aurora could detect a shade of coldness, not far removed from dislike, a feeling which can sometimes be dissimulated where strangers are concerned, but never where its object is a member of one’s family. After the customary salutations and compliments, Señora de Pardiñas, who did not belie her race so far as wiliness and obstinacy were concerned, said tentatively:
“Well, I will leave you now. After all, I did not find out what I had come to learn, and consequently—— Your sister is very reserved, Señor de Pardo.”
“Upon my faith, I have never thought so,” answered the artilleryman bluntly, almost rudely.
“Well, every one speaks of the fair according to the bargain he has made. With me she has shown herself extraordinarily reticent.” And without heeding the gesture or the glance of Rita, she continued undaunted: “For the last quarter of an hour I have been asking information from her in vain about a young countrywoman of ours, Esclavita Lamas, the niece of the rector of Vimieiro.”
Pardo listened like one in whose memory some vague recollection has been awakened.
“Stay—let me think—Vimieiro—Lamas—Lamas Tarrío. He was an intimate friend of papa’s. Rita knows all about him; she has the whole story at her fingers’ ends.—What objection have you to tell it to Doña Aurora?”
A caricaturist desiring to represent bourgeois dignity in its most exaggerated form might have copied with exactness the features and expression of Rita as, arching her brows and pointing to her eldest daughter leaning against the commandant’s knees, she exclaimed impressively:
“The child!”
“Well, what of the child?” responded Don Gabriel, imitating his sister’s tragic tone. “Is it one of those shocking things that innocent ears must not hear—that the cat has had kittens, for instance?”
“Gabriel, you are dreadful,” groaned Rita, casting up her beautiful southern eyes. “When one is killing one’s self, trying to make your nieces what they ought to be in society, you must do your best to—there is no use in trying to struggle against people’s dispositions.”