This announcement took Luiza by surprise. She was still in her dressing-gown, and her eyes were red with weeping. She powdered her face, smoothed her hair, and went into the parlor.
Bazilio, dressed in a light-gray suit, was seated in a melancholy attitude on the piano-stool. His air was grave, and without preface he proceeded to say that, notwithstanding her anger of yesterday, he took it for granted that everything was as before between them. That he had come to see her because at such a time they could not separate without coming to an understanding, and without arranging, above all, the question of the letters. And with a sorrowful gesture, like one who makes an effort to keep back his tears, he added,—
“For I find myself under the necessity of leaving Lisbon, my dear.”
Luiza smiled scornfully, without looking at him.
Bazilio continued: “Only for a short time, of course,—three weeks or a month at most. But, after all, it is a separation. If my own interests only were concerned—” and he shrugged his shoulders with a disdainful gesture. “But the interests of others are also at stake. This morning I received this.”
He handed her a telegram. She looked at it for a moment without opening it; the paper trembled in her hand.
“Read it, I beg of you.”
“What for?” she answered.
She read, however, in a low voice: “Come at once; grave complications. Presence absolutely necessary.”
She folded the paper and gave it back to him.