“I am going to pray at the hermitage of La Fuensanta,” said Remedios to Quentin. “Do you wish to come with me?”
Remedios, her young maid-servant, and Quentin left the house as evening fell.
The two women said their prayers, and then Remedios and Quentin returned chatting from the hermitage. Remedios told Quentin that some of her stepmother’s invectives had reached Rafaela’s ears, and Quentin promised the girl that he would silence the Countess. He thought of dedicating a few stings to her in La Víbora which might mortify her. Then Remedios spoke of her brother-in-law. She felt a strong antipathy for him, and, while realizing that he was good and amiable, she could not bear him.
To prolong the conversation, they took the longest way home.
It was an autumn day with a deep blue sky.
In the west, long, narrow clouds tinged with red, floated one above the other in several strata. They walked by the Church of San Lorenzo. The square tower rose before them with its angel figure on the point of the roof; the great rose-window, lit by the rosy hue of late afternoon, seemed some ethereal, incorporeal thing, and above the rosette, a white figure of a saint stood out against a vaulted niche.
They returned by the Calle de Santa María de Gracia. Remedios read the signs on the stores as she passed them, and the names of the streets. One of these was called Puchinelas, another, Juan Palo, another El Verdugo....
A lot of questions suggested themselves to the child, to which Quentin did not know how to reply.
They went along the Calle de Santa María. Overhead, the rosy sky showed between the two broken lines of roofs; the water pipes stuck into the air from the eaves like the gargoyles and cantilevers of a Gothic church; the houses were bathed in a mysterious light....
Against the white walls of an ancient convent with tall Venetian blinds, the scarlet splendour of the sky quivered gently; and in the distance, at the end of the street, the hoary tower of a church, as it received the last rays of the sun, shone like a red-hot coal.