“My God! if Jorge were only here!” she exclaimed. “If Jorge were only here!”
“It is for your own good,” stammered Sebastião.
“But let us discuss the matter. What harm could come from this? He is my only relative. We were brought up together. He was always at our house in the street of the Magdalena, and he dined with us every day as if he had been my brother. When I was little he used to carry me in his arms.”
And she accumulated details of their intimacy, exaggerating some, inventing others, haphazard, on the impulse of her anger.
“He comes,” she continued, “he remains a moment, we have some music,—for he plays admirably on the piano,—he smokes a cigarette, and then he goes away.” She thus sought instinctively to justify herself.
Sebastião was struck dumb. This woman, who inspired him with terror, seemed to him to be not Luiza, but some one else, and he was almost overwhelmed by the force of her angry voice, which he had never thought could be so stern, so eloquent.
“I thought, Senhora,” he said, rising with an air of dignified sorrow, “that it was my duty to let you know.”
There was a moment of solemn silence. His firm, almost severe accents compelled Luiza to pause in her torrent of words; she cast down her eyes, and said in a low and troubled voice,—
“Forgive me, Sebastião; but, in truth, I assure you I am infinitely obliged to you for warning me. You have done right, Sebastião.”
“It was in order to avoid the calumnies uttered by those vipers’ tongues. Am I not right?”