“What an expiation is mine! My God! What an expiation!”
“What is there in those letters?”
“Horrible things! I was crazy. There is one of mine, and two of his.”
“Of your cousin’s?”
Luiza slowly nodded her head affirmatively.
“And he?”
“I don’t know. He is in France, and he has not answered my letter.”
Luiza then rapidly related the story of the sarcophagus and the box.
“But what an idea of yours! To put a letter like that in such a place! It was a piece of folly, child!” And Leopoldina paced rapidly up and down the room. Her eyes, large, black, and full of excitement, seemed searching space for some remedy, some means of escape out of this difficulty.
“This is a question of money,” she said at last. Luiza, seated on the sofa, repeated dejectedly, “Yes, a question of money.”