"Doctor, what has been said is offensive to my...."
"Stop talking, my good Moreno, and hurry, if you please!" Monsalvat interrupted. "I'll pay you well for your trouble."
"At your orders, Doctor, whatever you say," the man replied, inclining his head in humility. "It's you that asks it, sir, and I'll do anything for you! Just as in those distant days which never will return, Moreno, Attorney at law, will always...."
The man who was to accompany him grasped his arm and hustled him away. Fernando returned to his mother's room.
Aquilina was seriously ill. From her rapid pulse Monsalvat guessed she must be suffering from a heart attack. But what was there to do? He thought of cold applications and asked the girl, Moreno's oldest daughter, to prepare them. The woman quack remained in the room, partly enjoying the prospect of witnessing the doctor's failure, and partly bored. Celedonia sat at the bedside, casting contemptuous glances at Monsalvat.
"Leave me with my mother," he ordered, and the women went out, grumbling.
When Aquilina found herself alone with her son, she began to weep. Up to this moment she had been overwhelmed by the fear of death. But now her son's presence seemed to comfort her.
"Fernando," she began, when she was able to speak, "I have been a bad mother. If I could only see Eugenia before I go! Look for her ... find her ... so that she will come tomorrow. I was a bad mother I guess! It was my fault she went away! I knew what she was doing; I allowed her to go on."
Fernando tried to console her, assuring her that she was exaggerating her responsibility. He was sincere in this, for he could not believe his own mother had consented to her daughter's wrong-doing. In the miserable wretch before him he could see not a bad but an ignorant woman, doomed by her own foolishness, and by the circumstances of her life.
"Yes, a bad woman," repeated Aquilina. "After Eugenia had given herself up to a bad life, I let her come here, and I let her give me money. At first, after Arnedo left her, she came back, and wanted to be a good girl. But Celedonia couldn't let her ... and I knew it all the time. Oh, Fernando, can you forgive me? Can you forgive me for all the harm I did you, too? I saw more than once how unhappy you were on account of me. If I had been a good mother, I would rather have died than harm you!"