He continued to visit the countess, as before. He felt that he must see her; he had grown accustomed to her enthusiastic praise of his artistic merits.
Sometimes the impetuous nature of his youthful days awakened and he longed to rid himself of this shameful chain. The woman had bewitched him; she sent for him without any reason, she seemed to delight in making him suffer, she needed him for a plaything. She spoke of Monteverde and their love with quiet cynicism, as if the doctor were her husband. She had to confide the secrets of her life to some one, with that imperious naïveté that forces the guilty to confess. Little by little she let the master into the secret of her passion, telling him unblushingly of the most intimate details of their meetings, which were often in her own house. They took advantage of the blindness of the count, who seemed almost stunned by his failure to receive the Fleece; they took a morbid delight in the danger of being surprised.
"I tell you this, Mariano, I don't know why it is I feel as I do toward you; I like you as a brother. No, not as a brother, rather as a confidential woman friend."
When Renovales was alone, he despised Concha's frankness. It was just as people believed; she was very attractive, very pretty, but absolutely lacking in scruples. As for himself, he heaped insults on himself in the slang of his Bohemian days, comparing himself with all the horned animals he could think of.
"I won't go there again. It's disgraceful. A pretty part you are playing, master!"
But he had hardly been absent two days when Marie, the Countess's French maid, appeared with the scented letter, or it arrived in the mail, where it stood out scandalously among the other envelopes of the master's correspondence.
"Curse that woman!" exclaimed Renovales, hastening to hide the showy note. "What a lack of prudence. One of these fine days, Josephina will discover these letters."
Cotoner, in his blind devotion to his idol whom he considered irresistible, supposed that the Alberca woman was madly in love with the master and shook his head sadly.
"This will have a bad end, Mariano. You ought to break with her. The peace of your home! You are piling up trouble for yourself."
The letters were always alike; endless complaints at his short absences. "Cher maître, I could not sleep last night, thinking of you," and she ended with "Your admirer and good friend, Coquillerosse," a nom de guerre she had adopted for her correspondence with the artist.