“My husband is going to-day to the country. I shall go to dine with you, but not before six. Will this be agreeable to you?”
The letter put her in a good-humor; it was now some weeks since she had seen her friend. How they would laugh and chat together! And Bazilio was to come at two. A perfect day!
She went to the kitchen to give orders for the dinner, and as she was coming downstairs Sebastião’s servant entered, with a bunch of roses, and a message inquiring how she was.
“Better, much better,” said Luiza. And to reassure Sebastião, in order that he might not call, she added that she was, in fact, quite well, and would perhaps go out.
“The roses,” she thought, “have come just in time.” And she placed them herself in the vases, singing as she did so, her glance animated, pleased with herself and with her manner of life, which was now interesting and full of incidents.
At two, already dressed, she went into the parlor, and seated herself at the piano to practise the “Medjé” of Gounod, which Bazilio had brought her, and which she took pleasure in singing, on account of its tender and passionate character. At half-past two she began to grow impatient, and her fingers no longer touched the keys with certainty. “He ought to be here now,” she thought. She opened the windows and glanced out into the street; but the professor’s servant, who was sewing at the window, raised towards her a pair of eyes so full of curiosity, that she closed it quickly, and began to play again with nervous haste. She heard a carriage coming down the street, and rose, with her heart palpitating; but the carriage rolled by.
Three o’clock! It seemed to her that it had grown warmer, that the heat was almost insupportable; she felt suffocating, and went to her room to powder her face. What if Bazilio should be sick! And in a hotel! Alone, at the mercy of careless and indifferent servants! But no; in that case he would have written to her. If he did not come it was because he did not want to come. Egotist! He did not deserve that she should distress herself in this way about him. But she was positively suffocating! She went to look for a fan, and with nervous hand shook it angrily because it did not open quickly enough. Since this was his character, she would refuse to see him. Thus everything would be at an end between them.
And all at once she beheld in imagination this passionate love vanish like smoke carried away by the wind. She felt relieved, and experienced an intense desire for rest. It was in truth absurd, with a husband like Jorge, to let her thoughts dwell on any other man,—on a feather-head, a weathercock.
Four o’clock struck. She was seized with a fit of desperation; she ran to Jorge’s writing-table, took a sheet of paper, and wrote feverishly:—
“DEAR BAZILIO,—Why do you not come? Are you sick? If you knew the anguish you make me suffer—”