Doña Aurora concealed the satisfaction her victory gave her, but, a woman after all, she said to herself, casting a side glance at Rita:
“I’ve got the best of you, hypocrite!”
“You shall hear,” began the commandant. “This Father Lamas was a simple-minded man, illiterate as all the rural clergy were at that time,—now they are much more enlightened,—and not over-intelligent; but he performed all his parochial duties faithfully, and if he committed faults he succeeded in hiding them. If you cannot be chaste, be cautious, as the saying is. Well, one night there came to the door of the rectory a girl, about tea years old, an orphan, who lived upon charity; in one house they gave her a piece of corn bread, in another a bundle of corn leaves to sleep upon, here a ragged shawl, there a pair of old shoes. In this way the wretched girl managed to live. The rector took pity upon her and said to her: ‘Stay here; you can learn housework; you will have clothes to wear, a bed to sleep in, and good hot soup to nourish you.’ And so it was decided—the girl stayed.”
“The girl was Esclavita?”
“No, Señora, no Señora. Wait a while. The girl turned out bright and capable; she put away from her her melancholy, as they say in our country, and she even grew rosy and handsome. And—” here the voice of the commandant took a sarcastic tone—“when the flower of maidenhood bloomed—”
“Oh, Gabriel,” remonstrated Rita, “certain things should be spoken of in a different way. There is no need of entering into details that——”
“Bah!” said Doña Aurora. “We are all of us married and I am an old woman. We know all about it and are not to be so easily shocked as that comes to, my dear. Go on. What came afterward?”
“Afterward came Esclavita.”
Although Señora Pardiñas had affirmed that she knew all about it, this piece of information, given thus suddenly, almost made her jump in her chair.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, and then looked very thoughtful. “That is why the poor girl—well, and afterward?”