The dining-room was situated in the back part of the house; it looked out upon a plot of ground enclosed by a low fence and overgrown with weeds. Here and there among the weeds, browned by the excessive heat, were a few large stones. A wild fig-tree, isolated in the midst of the plot, spread out its thick motionless foliage, that in the glare of the sunlight looked like burnished bronze. Other houses looked out on the same plot, with their balconies, their clothes spread out on a line to dry, the white walls of their little gardens, and their consumptive trees. An impalpable dust begrimed, so to speak, the luminous air.
“It is hot enough to suffocate the birds,” said Luiza, closing the window. “Can you not fancy yourself already in Alemtejo?”
She came and seated herself on the arm of the easy-chair in which Jorge was reclining, and ran her fingers through his dark and curling locks, which he wore, in obedience to a caprice of his wife, parted down the middle. Jorge passed his arm around her waist.
“Have you given orders to get my white waistcoats ready?” he asked.
“They should be ready now,” said Luiza. “Juliana!” she called, rising, “Juliana!”
A sound of petticoats stiff with starch was heard approaching. Juliana entered. She was a woman of about forty years of age, and was extraordinarily thin. Her neck, long and withered, rose from out the frills of a shirt-waist, bordered with imitation lace. Her features, livid and contracted, were of a pale yellow tint. Her eyes, large and prominent, were crossed by minute red veins, and moved within their reddened lids with an expression of restless curiosity. She wore a head-dress in imitation of braids of hair, that gave to her head an appearance of enormous size. Her nose twitched continually with a nervous movement; and her dress, flat over the chest, short, and puffed out below by her stiffened petticoats, allowed a small and well-shaped foot to be seen, clad in a cloth boot tipped with patent leather.
The waistcoats were not ready, she said, because she had not had time to starch them. She spoke in a sing-song voice, after the manner of the natives of Lisbon, through half-closed lips, and with her head bent down.
“But I told you to be sure to have them ready,” said Luiza; “go get them ready now, in the best way you can. They must be packed up to-night in the valise.”
Juliana had hardly left the room when Luiza exclaimed: “That woman inspires me with horror, Jorge.”
She had been two years in the house, and Luiza could not yet accustom herself to the sight of her, to her gestures, to the piping manner in which she pronounced certain words, drawling the r’s, to the noise made by the heels of her shoes, which were furnished with little metal plates, to her pretensions to possessing a small foot, and to her black kid gloves on Sunday.