“For me there is nothing like a night at the theatre,—nothing!”
“But the actors here are so poor!” responded Bazilio, with a disconsolate air.
Donna Felicidade did not answer; half risen from her chair, her eyes bright and humid, she was making persistent gestures of salutation to some one with her hand.
“They have not seen me,” she exclaimed at last, with an air of desperation.
“Is it the counsellor?” asked Luiza.
“No, it is the Countess of Alviella; she did not see me; she often goes to the Chapel of the Encarnação; she is a friend of mine; she is an angel; her father-in-law is with her; see!”
Bazilio did not take his eyes from Luiza’s face. Seen through her white veil, and in that dusty atmosphere, its features were defined in soft and uncertain outlines. Her blond, wavy hair, of a darker shade at night, followed the contour of her small head, giving her an expression of infantile and tender grace; her pearl-colored gloves displayed the elegant shape of her hands—the delicate wrists surrounded by a frill of lace—as they rested, holding her fan, on the dark background of her lap.
“And you,—what have you been doing?” asked Bazilio in his turn.
She had spent a very tiresome day, she said, alone from morning till night.
He, too, had spent the morning alone, lying on the sofa reading the “Femme de Feu,” of Belot. “Have you read it?” he asked her.