“Treat the old woman with kindness,” she had said; “be a patient nurse to her. She is rich, and not miserly; it is not impossible that she may leave you a good round sum when she dies.”
For a whole year Juliana, devoured by ambition, served the old woman as her nurse. What zeal in her service! What attentions she bestowed upon her!
Donna Virginia had a strong love of life; the thought of dying made her furious. But when she scolded Juliana, in her harsh and guttural voice, the latter only grew more attentive, more affectionate than before. The old woman was at last touched by her devotion. She called her her providence; and when visitors came she praised her without stint. She had spoken very highly of her to Jorge.
“There is not another woman like her!” she exclaimed; “not another!”
“Ah, you have made your fortune,” Aunt Victoria would say to her. “At the very least she will leave you three contos de reis.”
A conto de reis! At night, when the old woman lay groaning on her antique bedstead of lignum-vitæ, Juliana would behold in fancy a conto de reis lying in refulgent brightness before her, in heaps of gold prodigious and inexhaustible. What should she do with the money? And seated at the bedside of the invalid, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, her eyes fixed and dilated, she would spend the hours forming plans,—she would open a millinery shop; and then she would dream of other joys, hitherto unthought of; a conto de reis was a dowry; she might marry and have a husband of her own. All her misery would be at an end. She would eat well, and only of what she liked,—of her own provisions. She would order; she would have a servant, her servant She was seized with nervous twitching in the stomach, from joy. She would be a good mistress; but let the servants take care to conduct themselves properly; she would tolerate no answering back, no angry glances. And dominated by these fancies she would walk softly up and down the room, shuffling her feet and talking to herself. No, she would countenance nothing that was not perfectly right and proper; she would be a model mistress.
Here perhaps the old woman would exhale a sigh.
“This one is going to die,” Juliana would say to herself; “she will certainly die to-day.”
And with eagerness in her eyes she would go presently to the drawers of the bureau where the money and the papers were kept. Then perhaps the old woman would want a drink, and Juliana would return to her bedside.
“How do you feel?” she would ask in lachrymose accents.