Luiza returned to her room, her nerves quivering. As she looked at herself in the glass, she hardly recognized herself. Never before had she been so beautiful. She took a few steps in silence. Juliana was arranging the drawers of the bureau.
“Who rang the bell a little while ago?” asked Luiza.
“Senhor Sebastião. He would not come in. He said he would return.”
He had, in fact, said that he would return; but he began to be ashamed of coming every day, and always finding her with visitors. He was surprised at first when Juliana said to him, “She is with a gentleman,—a young man who was here yesterday.”
“Who could it be?” he asked himself. He was acquainted with all the friends of the family. It was probably some clerk in the Department, he told himself, or some proprietor of mines; the son of Alonso, perhaps, in relation to some business of Jorge’s,—yes, that must be it. And on Sunday evening, when he saw the windows of the parlor unlighted, he had felt a vague sense of oppression. He had brought with him the score of Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet,” which Luiza wished to study; and when Juliana told him from the balcony that her mistress had left the house in a carriage with Donna Felicidade, he stood softly stroking his beard in momentary embarrassment, his heavy book under his arm. Then he remembered the enthusiastic admiration of Donna Felicidade for the theatre of Donna Maria. But, could they have gone alone to the theatre, and with this July heat? After all, it was possible; and so he went to the Donna Maria.
The theatre, which was almost empty, presented a lugubrious aspect. Here and there, in the boxes, were to be seen a few family groups who were enjoying the Sunday evening with a melancholy air, the children leaning, asleep, against the embossed morocco-covered railing. In the pit and in the almost deserted stalls were to be seen a few persons listening to the play with a sleepy air, wiping the perspiration from their foreheads from time to time with their silk handkerchiefs. The chandelier diffused a drowsy light. Every one was yawning. On the stage, which represented a ball-room furnished in yellow, an old man was speaking, with the monotony of water dropping from a fountain, to a very slender woman with her hair in curls. In the orchestra the musicians were fast asleep.
Sebastião went out. Where could they be? On the following day he learned. As he was going down the street of the Moinho de Vento, his neighbor Netto, who was coming towards him, his cigar in the corner of his mouth, which was shaded by a gray mustache, stopped him abruptly with the words,—
“Oh, friend Sebastião, I want to speak to you. Yesterday I saw Donna Luiza in the Passeio, with a young man with whose face I am familiar. But where have I seen him? Who the devil is he?”
Sebastião shrugged his shoulders.
“A young man, tall, fine-looking, with a foreign air,” Netto continued. “I know I have met him before. The other day I saw him go into a house down the street. Don’t you know who he is?”