She went to the wardrobe, and found the letter in her pocket. This reassured her; doubtless her other letter had been thrown into the drain. But how imprudent she had been!
“Well, there is nothing more to be done about it,” she said, seating herself resignedly.
Donna Felicidade, lowering her voice to a confidential tone, at once began,—
“I have come to speak to you about something. It is a secret.”
Luiza was startled.
“You know,” continued Donna Felicidade, very slowly, and dwelling on each word, “that my servant Josefa is going to be married to the young man who goes on errands for me. The man is from Tuy, and he says that in his part of the country there is a woman who has a gift for making marriages which is truly miraculous. He says there is nothing for it,—that as soon as the cards are dealt for a man, he conceives for the woman who causes it to be done so violent a passion that the marriage is arranged immediately, and the greatest happiness follows.”
Luiza, reassured, smiled.
“Listen,” continued Donna Felicidade; “don’t begin now with your usual objections.”
In the solemn accents of Donna Felicidade there was a note of superstitious respect.
“He says she has wrought miracles,” she continued; “men who had abandoned girls after deceiving them, others who neglected their sweethearts, husbands who had ceased to care for their wives,—in a word, in every case of the kind it operates with magic speed. The man first grows melancholy, then enamoured, and ends by being madly in love with the woman he has scorned. The man has told me all about it, and I have resolved at once—”