“Because he always writes to me,” she interrupted, “that he is bored to death, that he is lonely, and that he cannot bear Alemtejo.” Then, seeing Sebastião look at his watch, “What!” she cried, “are you going already? You have been here only a few moments.”
He was obliged to be down town at three, he answered.
Luiza wanted to detain him, without knowing why. She felt her resolution failing her. She began to speak of the work at Almada.
Sebastião had begun the work, thinking that two or three hundred thousand reis would suffice for the alterations he contemplated making. But one thing led to another, and it was a bottomless gulf, he declared, that swallowed up his money.
“When one is rich—” responded Luiza, with a forced laugh.
“It seems as if it were nothing,” continued Sebastião; “but the painting of a door, a new window, the papering of a room, a brick pavement,—what with one thing and another, eight hundred thousand reis have gone.”
He rose to take his leave, saying,—
“I think that chatterbox will soon return to us now.”
“If the shopkeeper’s wife will let him,” said Luiza.
When Sebastião was gone, she began to walk up and down the room, preoccupied by this idea. To allow himself to be made love to by the shopkeeper’s wife, the wife of the delegate, and who could tell how many others! She had confidence in him, of course, but after all, he was a man. And suddenly she pictured him to herself in the embrace of the shopkeeper’s wife, or imprinting a kiss on the neck of the wife of the delegate; and imaginary instances of Jorge’s faithlessness thronged tumultuously to her mind. It was two months since he had left home; he was weary of his loneliness, he met a pretty woman, and he flirted with her as an innocent and agreeable pastime. Traitor! She resolved to write to him a severe and dignified letter,—“he must return at once, or she would go join him.” She went to her room in a state of great excitement. The likeness of Jorge, that she had taken the day before from the satchel, was on her dressing-table. She took it up and looked at it. She was not surprised that they should fall in love with him. He was amiable and handsome. She felt a wave of jealousy sweep over her that darkened her vision; if he should deceive her,—if she discovered the slightest proof of his faithlessness, she would leave him, she would retire to a convent, she would die, she would kill him!