The girl entered in a fright, saying that Juliana had left the house early in the morning, that she had not yet returned, and that her work was undone.
“Very well; get me some breakfast; I will be there directly.”
What a relief! She took it for granted that Juliana had left the house finally. With what object? To concoct some plot, doubtless. Her best course was to go at once to their place of meeting, and wait there for Bazilio. She went to the dining-room and drank a glass of water hastily, without sitting down.
“Could the Senhora Juliana have been taken sick?” Joanna came to ask her.
“We shall soon know,” responded Luiza.
At half-past one she put on her hat. Her heart beat violently; notwithstanding her dread of seeing Juliana in case she should return, she could not resolve to leave her home—forever! She sat down, with her morocco satchel in her lap.
“But why delay?” she said to herself at last, rising, as if impelled by some invisible and irresistible force. She went into her bedroom; her wrapper and slippers were lying on the rug.
“What a misfortune!” she said to herself, as she picked them up mechanically. She went to her dressing-table, opened the drawer and put away the combs; then went hastily into the parlor, took Jorge’s likeness out of the album, and put it, with a trembling hand, into the satchel. She glanced wildly around, left the room, and ran downstairs.
A coupé was driving along the Patriarchal. She stopped it, and entering, told the coachman to drive to the Central Hotel.
Senhor Brito had gone out early in the morning, the porter obsequiously informed her, when she reached the hotel. A vessel had apparently just arrived, for men were carrying into the hotel luggage, trunks covered with oil-cloth, and boxes bound with iron. Some of the passengers, not yet recovered from the effects of the sea-sickness, and a little bewildered by the novelty of their surroundings, were talking and giving directions to the servants all at once. The bustle revived Luiza’s spirits; she felt a sudden desire to travel, to witness the excitement and confusion of the railway-stations at night, by gaslight; to see gay groups seated on the deck of the steamer in the morning. She told the coachman to drive to the house where she was to meet Bazilio. As she drove on, it seemed to her as if all her past existence, Juliana and her domestic life, were fading away before her gaze from a horizon which she was to leave forever behind her. At the door of a bookseller’s shop she caught a glimpse of Julião, and she drew back hastily into a corner of the coupé; she could not see him distinctly, and she regretted it. She was going away without seeing a single friend of the house. They all, Julião, Ernesto, the counsellor, Donna Felicidade, appeared to her now adorable, possessed of noble qualities that hitherto she had not suspected in them, and suddenly endowed with peculiar charms. And poor Sebastião, who was so good! Never again should she hear him play the malaguenha!