“Let her go, let her go! She was a bad woman!”
“She was a good-for-nothing creature,” said Jorge. “Let us hope she is now boiling in the caldron of Pedro Botello, eh, Aunt Joanna?”
“Jorge!” exclaimed Luiza, reprovingly. She thought it a Christian duty to recite two Pater Nosters for the dead woman’s soul.
This was the sole effect produced on earth by the death of her who was now being carried by two worn-out hacks to the common burial-ground, and who in life was known as Juliana Conceiro Tavira.
On the following day Luiza was better, and they spoke of returning home, to the great disgust of Aunt Joanna. Sebastião said nothing, but he secretly desired that Luiza’s convalescence might detain them in his house for an indefinite period. She gave him such grateful glances that he alone could understand! He was so happy to have her and Jorge under his roof! He held consultations with Aunt Vicenta about the dinner; he walked through the house with a feeling of reverence, almost on tiptoe, as if it were sanctified by her presence in it; he filled the vases with camellias and violets; he smiled beatifically when Jorge smacked his lips over the old cognac after dinner. He felt an indefinable sense of well-being that infused new life into him, and he thought sorrowfully that when she went away an air of greater coldness than before would hang over everything, like the sadness that hangs over a ruin.
Two days afterwards, however, they returned home. Luiza was very much pleased with the new servant whom Sebastião had engaged. She was a girl with expressive eyes, and a pleasing manner, and was very neat in her person. Her name was Marianna, and she soon told Joanna that she would do anything for the mistress, who had an angelic disposition, and who was very handsome.
Jorge sent Juliana’s trunks to Aunt Victoria.
When Jorge left the house in the afternoon, Luiza shut herself up in her room with Juliana’s pocket-book, drew down the blinds, lighted a candle, and burned the letters. Her hands trembled, and she beheld, with eyes swimming in tears, those words, the evidence of her shame, disappear in a column of white smoke,—at last, thanks to Sebastião, to that dear Sebastião! She went to take a look at the parlor, at the kitchen; everything seemed new to her, and life full of sweetness; she opened the windows, ran her fingers over the keys of the piano, tore to pieces with a superstitious feeling the music of Medjé that Bazilio had given her, talked a long time to Marianna, and sipping her cup of chicken-broth, thought with a radiant countenance,—
“How happy I shall be now!”
When she heard Jorge’s step in the hall she ran out to meet him, threw her arms around his neck, and with her head on his shoulder said,—