“My lord and master weighs the meat!” she added. “But, after all, that suits me, for the very thought of going into the kitchen sickens me.” She sighed. She would have taken more wine, but the bottle was empty.
“Will you have some champagne?” asked Luiza with a laugh. “I have some of a very good brand, that a Spaniard, the proprietor of a mine, sent to Jorge.”
And she herself went to bring the bottle, took off its blue wrapper, and amid bursts of laughter and little cries of affected terror uncorked it. The sight of the foam in their glasses put them both in good-humor, and they looked at the wine with an air of unspeakable well-being.
Leopoldina said she knew exactly how to open champagne, and spoke mysteriously of a certain supper. The Tuesday of Carnival-week two years ago! If she were rich she would drink nothing, she said, but champagne.
Luiza’s tastes were different; her ambition was to have a coupé. They talked of what they would do if they were rich. Luiza’s desire was to travel,—to go to Paris, to Seville, to Rome. The desires of Leopoldina were more ambitious; she wished for a long life, carriages, a box at the theatre, a season at Cintra, suppers, balls, dresses, play. She loved monte, she said, which it made her heart beat to play; and she felt sure that she would adore roulette.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, “men are happier than we are. Nature meant me for a man. How well it would have suited me!”
She rose and seated herself lazily in the easy-chair beside the window. Twilight was softly falling; beyond the green plot of ground in front golden clouds fringed with a brilliant red floated in the atmosphere.
“A man may do anything he wishes; nothing he does is criticised. Has it never occurred to you, Luiza, to run away,—but entirely alone?”
Luiza laughed.
“Never!” she replied. “What nonsense!”