Luiza threw herself on his breast with all the sorrowful abandon of the hour; she fixed her gaze tenderly on him through her half-closed lids, her arms encircled his neck with languid grace, and pressing her lips to his,—
“Jorge, dearest Jorge!” she murmured, while her bosom heaved with a gentle sigh.
CHAPTER III.
COUSIN BAZILIO.
TWELVE days had passed since Jorge’s departure; and Luiza, notwithstanding the heat and the dust, resolved to dress herself and pay a visit to Leopoldina, although she was well aware that Jorge would be displeased if he should come to know that she had done so. But she was so weary of her solitude! The time hung so heavy on her hands! In the morning, indeed, she had her household cares, her work, her toilet to occupy her,—books to read. But in the evening! At the hour in which Jorge was accustomed to return from the office, it seemed to her as if solitude hemmed her in on all sides. His loud ring at the bell, his step in the hall,—she missed them both. When night closed in she became sad without knowing why, and yielded herself, an unresisting prey, to the vague melancholy that oppressed her. When she seated herself at the piano, sorrowful airs seemed to flow from it at her touch,—cavatinas full of tears, with which the keys seemed of their own accord to moan. A thousand foolish fancies would then occur to her mind. And later in the night, unable to close her eyes, and suffocating with the heat, she was equally a prey to the terrors and agitations of her widowed state.
Unaccustomed to solitude, she rebelled against it. She thought for a moment of inviting her aunt Patrocinio, an aged relative who lived in Belem, to stay with her; she would thus at least have some companionship in her loneliness. But she dreaded, on the other hand, to have always before her the sorrowful and depressed countenance of the widow, as she sat at her knitting, her large spectacles, framed in tortoiseshell, resting on her aquiline nose.
This morning the image of Leopoldina had suddenly presented itself to her mind, and it pleased her to think that she was free to come and go, to chat with her friend, and to spend in agreeable companionship the hottest hours of the day. Then her thoughts reverted to Jorge, and she said to herself that she would write to him to return home at the earliest possible moment. What a good idea it would be to go herself to Evora, she thought, to arrive there at about three in the afternoon when he would have returned from his work, in his blue spectacles, covered with dust and exhausted by the heat, and give him a joyful surprise, embracing him before the astonished landlady. And in the evening to put on a light dress, and go out to see the town, leaning, somewhat fatigued by her journey, on his arm. Every one would gaze at her with surprise as she passed through the narrow and solitary streets. The men would come out of the shops at the sound of her footsteps. “Who can it be?” they would ask one another. “She is a lady from Lisbon,” some one would say,—“the wife of the engineer.”
Luiza, absorbed in these fancies, and smiling to herself, was tying the ribbons of her gown before the looking-glass, when the door opened softly.
“Who is there?” she asked, turning round.
“Senhora, may I go and see the doctor?” asked Juliana in suffering accents.
“You may go, but do not stay long,” answered Luiza. And looking at her gown sidewise in the glass, in order to add a few artistic touches to its folds, she continued, “Pull down my skirt—a little more—so. What is the matter with you?”