‘Why did you send for me?’ he asked.
‘But to advise me—to help me. I have been, all my life, cast upon the world alone. No one to help me—no one to understand. No one knows what I have suffered—my husband—’
‘Was one of the best and most patient of mortals, and is assuredly in heaven, where I hope there are a few mansions reserved for men only.’
Señora Barenna fetched one of her deepest sighs. She had a few lurking in the depth of her capacious being, reserved for such occasions as this. It was, it seemed, no more than her life had led her to expect.
‘You have had,’ went on her spiritual adviser, ‘a life of ease and luxury, a husband who denied you nothing. You have never lost a child by death, which I understand is—one of the greatest sorrows that God sends to women. You are an ungrateful female.’
Señora Barenna, whose face would have graced one of the very earliest of the martyrs, sat with folded hands waiting until the storm should pass.
‘Do you wish me to see Julia?’ asked Concha abruptly.
‘Yes—yes! And persuade her to conciliate the Alcalde—to tell him some story or another. It does not surely matter if it be not the strict truth. Anything to get these men out of the house. My maid Maria is so flighty. Ah—these young people! What a trial—my dear Padre, what a trial!’
‘Of course,’ said Father Concha. ‘But what a dull world it would be if our neighbour knew how to manage his own affairs! Shall we go to Julia?’
The perturbed lady preferred that the priest should see her daughter alone. A military-looking individual in white trousers and a dark green tunic stood guard over the door of Julia’s apartment, seeking by his attitude and the curl of his moustache to magnify his office in the eyes of a maid who happened to have an unusual amount of cleaning to do in that particular corridor.