“That tattling Juliana!” she cried; “and all for the pleasure of sowing discord!”
She was seized with a sudden fit of anger, and went into the laundry, slamming the door behind her as she entered.
“Who has given you orders to say whether any one comes to my house or not?” she said abruptly to Juliana.
“I did not think it was a secret,” responded the latter, laying down in surprise the iron she was using.
“Of course it is no secret, stupid! Why did you admit her? Have I not told you a thousand times that I do not wish to receive her?”
“The senhora has never told me so,” answered the woman, with a look of amazement, and beginning to grow angry in her turn.
“That is not the truth! Be silent!”
She turned her back on Juliana, and went to her own room with her nerves all unstrung. Presently she crossed over to the window, and leaning against it looked out.
The sun was just setting, darkness was gradually falling over the ill-paved street without, and not a breath of air was stirring. The houses of the neighborhood were old and shabby, with mean entrances; one could guess that they were inhabited by poorly-paid clerks. On their balconies, in pots, were some common plants,—sweet basil and carnations. In the upper stories, where the services of the laundress were but seldom called into requisition, clothes were hanging out to dry. The appealing notes of the “Virgin’s Prayer,” which some young girl of the neighborhood was playing on the piano with all the sentimental abandon peculiar to the day, fell upon her ears. Crowded together in the narrow balcony of the house opposite were the four daughters of Senhor Teixeira Azevedo, thin as tenterhooks, their hair in disorder, their faces unwashed, devoting the afternoon to the inspection of the neighboring windows, to making sport of the passers-by, and to watching, with the seriousness of idiots, their saliva fall in large drops on the pavement beneath.
“Jorge is right,” thought Luiza. But what more could she do, she asked herself. She never put her foot in Leopoldina’s house; she had taken her likeness out of the album in the parlor; and she had felt herself obliged to confess to her the fact of her husband’s antipathy towards her. What tears had they not shed together! Poor Leopoldina! she came to see her so seldom, and remained so short a time! But if he found her in the parlor would he really put her out of the house?