“There is no answer? Very well. Charming weather!”
He saluted her stiffly with his hand, and went down the steps, humming a tune.
“Who rang, Senhora Juliana?” the cook asked her.
“It was nothing,” Juliana muttered,—“a message from the dressmaker.”
From this time forth Joanna observed a change in her fellow-servant. When she took her coffee in the kitchen she no longer chatted with the cook as before; she seemed preoccupied, as if her thoughts were in some other place. Joanna was so struck by this that she even asked her,—
“Do you feel worse, Senhora Juliana?”
“I? Thank God, I never felt better.”
“You are always so silent!”
“Thoughts that I have here within my head. One is not always in the humor for talking.”
As she was shaking out the skirt of the gown her mistress had worn the day before, her hand came in contact with a paper in the pocket. It was the letter Luiza had written to Bazilio:—