“I should be glad to stay with you a while, but that I am exceedingly busy.”
“A thousand thanks!” returned Luiza, blushing. And wishing to divest this apparent familiarity of any importance that it mighty possess in Bazilio’s eyes, she continued, arranging the folds of her morning-gown, “During the last few days I have not been quite well, and I have received no one, excepting, of course, my cousin.”
Julião understood, in a vague sort of way, that he was being reproved. Surprised, confounded, ashamed, he crossed one leg over the other, laying on his knees the book he carried; and, as his trousers were too short, the elastics of his well-worn boots were disclosed to view.
There was a moment of painful silence.
“What lovely roses!” said Bazilio, at last, looking with an air of indifference at Sebastião’s roses.
“Very lovely,” responded Luiza. Beginning to feel sorry for Julião, she looked at him with a smile, trying to think of something pleasant to say to him.
“How warm it is!” she said at last, precipitately. “The heat is killing! Have you many patients?”
“Some cases of cholera-morbus,” responded Julião. “The fruits are the cause of these disorders of the stomach.”
Luiza lowered her eyes, and Bazilio began at once to talk of the little Viscountess of Azeias; when he left Lisbon she was looking charming. And what had become of her elder sister?
These inquiries concerning ladies of the nobility whom Julião did not know excluded him completely from the conversation, and covered him with humiliation. He felt his neck bathed in perspiration, and he began to open and shut mechanically the thick yellow-covered volume he carried.