Concha looked at her defiantly.
“I don’t ... I ... if Concha doesn’t believe in it all, I don’t see why she should sacrifice her happiness to something she doesn’t believe in,” she found herself saying.
Concha’s face relaxed for a second, and she flashed her a look of gratitude.
“Teresa!” cried the Doña, and her voice was inexpressibly reproachful.
Dick turned round from the chimneypiece: “Teresa’s quite right,” he said; “upon my soul, it would be madness, as she says, to sacrifice one’s happiness for ... for that sort of thing.”
“Dick!”
And he turned from the cold severity of the Doña’s voice and eye to a re-examination of the ornaments.
As to Teresa, though his words had been but an echo and corroboration of her own, she was unreasonable enough to be shocked by them; coming, as they did, from a descendant of the men who had witnessed the magnificent gesture with which Ridley and Latimer had lit a candle in England.
“Well, Teresa, as you think the same as Concha ... I don’t know what I have done.... I seem to have failed very much as a mother. It must be my own fault,” and she laughed bitterly.
Concha’s face softened: “Doña!” she said appealingly.