“Well,” insisted the obstinate Doña Aurora, “I come back to my complaint. Rita, don’t say that it was for the child’s sake that you refused to give me the information I asked. The child was not present, and even if she had been, by sending her out of the room——”
“Well, what of the child?”
“Which is what I am going to do now. Eugenita, child, go practice your Concone.”
The girl left the room, much against her will, casting on her uncle, as she went, a couple of affectionate farewell glances; but no scale or study was heard to tell that she had shut herself in the musical torture-chamber in which our young ladies, worthy of a better fate, are condemned to dislocate their fingers daily.
“You shall hear,” said Doña Aurora, emphatically, “now that we can speak freely. The question is that that girl, Esclavita Lamas, wants to enter my service; and that I, for my part, am greatly pleased with what I have seen of her. But I know nothing about her past, nor why she left her native place. There seems something odd in the whole affair. Your sister knows the story, and neither for God’s sake nor the saints’ will she tell it to me. There you have the cause of our dispute. It was beginning to grow serious when you came in.”
“The story,” said Gabriel, nervously wiping his gold-rimmed spectacles, and putting them on again carefully. “Wait a moment, Señora; for if my treacherous memory does not deceive me—Rita, is not that the Father Lamas who took a poor girl off the street into his house for charity? Tell the truth, or I shall write this very day to Galicia to inquire.”
“Heavens! What notions you have! You are growing more unbearable every day—Was I not going to tell you the truth? Yes, that was the Lamas, and since you insist upon opening his grave, and dragging him out to public shame, do it you, for I don’t want to have such a thing on my conscience.”
“It should weigh more heavily upon your conscience,” replied Gabriel, with vehemence, “to try to prevent the girl getting her place on account of the sins of others. Now I can tell you the whole story, Doña Aurora, by an end I have unwound the skein; it is the same with stories as with an old tune—if one remembers the first bar, one can sing the whole of it through without a mistake. And I can tell you that it is a novel, a real novel.”
“It may seem so to you,” said Rita, venomously, pulling the lace of her sleeves again. “As for me—there are certain things—— Well, I wash my hands of it.”