“Is there, then, a secret?” asked her companion, with playful mockery.
Tacita looked at her steadily, and grew pale. “I thought that I knew you; and I do not,” she said.
Elena resumed her dignity. “If you really object to telling me, then I will not ask,” she said. “You had not mentioned the fact that it was a great secret.”
“Nor have I said so now,” answered the girl with a look of distress. “My mother talked with me of our affairs just before she died, and my grandfather gave me some directions. What they said to me is sacred, and is mine. I do not wish to talk of it.”
“You swear that you will not tell me?” said Elena, looking at her keenly.
“I will not swear to anything!” exclaimed Tacita. “And I request you not to mention the subject again.”
“We will then dismiss it,” said her companion, and rose to leave the room. “I presumed on what I thought was a confidential friendship, and on the fact that your family confided you to me.”
Tacita said nothing. Her head drooped. All her past sorrows seemed to return upon her. This woman, heretofore so dignified and so delicate, had appeared to her in a new light. She had sometimes fancied that Elena understood something of her affairs; but, apparently, she did not. That she should show a vulgar and persistent curiosity was shocking.
After a while Elena came into the room, and standing at a window, looked out into the purple twilight starred with lamps. The crowd that in Seville seems never to sleep was flowing and murmuring through the plaza and the streets.
Tacita was weeping silently.