"LUIS."

He traced the lines of this letter with a trembling hand, and before finishing it, tears rose to his eyes.

CHAPTER XV

JOSEFINA SLEEPS

The n.o.ble Grandee easily guessed the author of his disgrace. As soon as he read the anonymous letter and recovered his self-command, his suspicions fell upon the Conde de Onis. In this he was only influenced by the likeness that he now clearly saw between him and the foundling.

For either his excessive pride had blinded his eyes, or else because Amalia had known how to keep him deceived, he had never noticed anything between them beyond a cool, conventional friendship at which n.o.body could have taken umbrage. The same pride arrested the course of his bitter thoughts by making the most of this consideration. Why give any importance to what an anonymous letter said? Why not suppose it was a vile calumny by which some enemy tried to envenom his existence? But the dart had gone so deep into his heart that he could not pull it out. All the considerations invented by his inclination could not destroy the perfect conviction that, without his knowing how, had taken shape in his brain. Sundry details, unnoticed at the time, soon stood out and guided him like lighted torches. The first of all was naturally the illness of his wife simultaneous with the appearance of the child. He recalled her strange aversion to having a doctor to see her; then the indulgence and extreme attention lavished on the child. He also recollected the visits that at one time his wife made to the Grange on the pretext of getting plants. There was no circ.u.mstance connected with the count's friendship and the finding of the child that he did not turn over and weigh thoughtfully. He became silent and meditative. The hard look of his piercing eyes was always fixed upon Amalia directly she came into the room. Sometimes he had the child fetched on some pretext or another, and looked at her for a long time trying to decipher in the lines of her face the enigma of her existence.

Amalia saw all this, and read the thoughts of her husband like an open book.

"When is Luis to be married?" asked the Grandee one day in an a.s.sumed, careless tone.

"They say it will be some time yet. He has to arrange I don't know how many matters before going to Madrid," she replied, with the greatest calmness.

"Is he still at the Grange?"

"Yes, always; he only comes in sometimes of an evening, according to what he told me one day when I met him in Barrosa's shop."

The very next evening the count appeared at the party.

"What? You here? Have you left the Grange?" Don Pedro asked, with a penetrating glance.

"Definitely, no; I have the carriage below. I am going back to sleep."

"You must be dull there, eh?" asked Don Cristobal Mateo.

"In the day, no; I am very busy with agricultural occupations, with the mill, cattle, &c. But the evenings are very long."

Luis only came for the sake of seeing his daughter. Amalia had not allowed it until the child had partially recovered; then she was dressed as before, and she resumed her old rights. But not the affection. The charm was gone, because Luis hated her, especially through having had to submit through coercion. With the ardent pa.s.sion full of love and mystery there had also mingled an attachment to the little creature.

But the tortures that her mad anger inflicted on the little girl had made a gulf between them. The poor child, clad in rich clothes, wandered alone about the palace of the Quinones without inspiring any one with tenderness. Amalia avoided her. The servants, ashamed of their unkind treatment, and sulky at the sudden change which put the foundling again above them, did not speak to her. The long martyrdom she had undergone and the terrible illness with which it terminated had made great ravages in her appearance. Her pale cheek was as transparent as mother-of-pearl; there was still a dark black circle from agitation and pain round her eyes. The count's heart contracted every time he saw her, and it cost him some effort to restrain his tears.

Amalia did not tell her lover of the imprudent anonymous letter she had sent to Quinones. Fearing from her husband's excitability some serious consequence would ensue, she determined to get him off the scent, as it was not possible to restore his tranquillity. The course that seemed to her best to take was to remove his suspicions from Luis and put them on Jaime Moro. He was the only one who, by his position, age, and appearance could seem like a probable lover. She began by treating him before Don Pedro with particular partiality, picking him out from the other guests in a very conspicuous manner. She cast smiling, significant glances at him; she took pleasure in standing behind his chair when he was playing at _tresillo_ and joking with him; she called him every minute to her on some pretext or other, and then kept him at her side with long whispering conversations in which her cheek came in close proximity with his. It was not so easy as it seemed to make a conquest of Moro, although it was only a make-believe. He was not at all churlish; on the contrary, he had a just reputation of being gentlemanly and courteous with ladies; but when ladies stand in the way of billiards or _tresillo_ there is n.o.body six miles round so cross and uncivil.

Amalia was a great bore to him when the _tresillo_ players were waiting for him. Then his answers to her questions did not come readily; he smiled mechanically and gave frequent longing glances at the table where his companions were enjoying the delights of some trick with a good suit.

"Moro, sit here, we will have a chat together."

Moro trembled as if the world were coming to an end. He took a seat by the side of the lady with a face that was very long, not at all consistent with the pa.s.sion that was supposed to consume his breast. The Grandee had paid little heed to these marks of favour and insinuating smiles of his wife. He looked at them with vacant eyes without any suspicion arising in his mind, which was entirely turned in the right direction. Nevertheless, Amalia was so persistent and seemed so engrossed, that the n.o.ble gentleman began to pay heed to those signs and to attribute some significance to them. The Valencian felt the pleasure of triumph. Her machinations were about to be realised. And to give an important, decisive stroke to her plot, she suddenly thought of a dangerous trick. She was seated in a corner with Jaime Moro at her side, quite in sight of Don Pedro. Moro was _distrait_ as usual, and the wife of Quinones had to make prodigious efforts to sustain the conversation; she smiled, she coquetted, she involved him in a mesh of honeyed phrases, which she greatly intensified with her smile so as to attract Don Pedro's attention.

"What is it? Are you looking at my bracelet?"

Moro had not noticed it.

"It is very pretty," he quickly returned politely.

"It belonged to my mother. It is better than it looks. This portrait, which is of my grandmother, is made in mosaic. Look!"

Whereupon she raised her hand, and Moro looked at it with a.s.sumed admiration.

"Look well at it."

And she raised it a little more so as to bring it near his face. Then seeing out of the corner of her eye that Don Pedro was looking at her, she lifted it a little more so as to brush the lips of the young man; then she instantly withdrew it with a quick gesture. Moro was quite taken aback. He involuntarily looked at Don Pedro, and seeing that his glance was fixed on him with a cold piercing look, he coloured up to the eyes; and Amalia rose and left the room as if to hide her confusion.

The proud Grandee was fully overwhelmed by the secret that he thought he had discovered. His ideas underwent a sudden shock. Agitated by a thousand conflicting suspicions, dominated by furious anger, he moved the cards in his trembling hands without thinking of them, for his mind was full of awful revenge against his wife and against him. Against whom? Who was the traitor? Doubt inflamed his rage. What he had seen was very conclusive. Nevertheless, he could not get the Conde de Onis out of his mind. The testimony of his eyes was arrayed against his instinct, a voice within that told him continually the name of his enemy.

The count himself then appeared at the party. He greeted Amalia coldly, and was going straight to the library, when Manuel Antonio caught hold of him by the tail of his coat.

"Where are you off to, Luis? Come here, boy; don't go and bury yourself in the game directly. Look here, Maria Josefa and Jovita have been disputing every evening about the date of your marriage. But I said to them: 'Don't dispute any more. If Luis comes to-day he is so kind that he will certainly tell you himself.'"

"Then you told them wrong," replied the count, approaching the group.

"Have you turned so cross then?"

"It is not crossness, it is ignorance. These ladies know very well that things don't happen as, and when, we wish. If I were to name a date now, and it turned out differently they would think that I had been making fun of them."

In spite of the efforts he made to smile, the face of the count expressed infinite sadness, and his voice was low and hoa.r.s.e.

"No, no! nothing of the sort!" exclaimed Jovita, laughing. "Tell us any day, and if it should turn out differently we shall think it was not by your wish."

"Very well, then, to-morrow."

"So soon as that!" cried both old maids in astonishment.

"You are not easy to please. What day do you want me to marry? Fix it yourselves."

The count had not said a word to anybody about his marriage being broken off. The innate weakness of his character made him withhold a piece of news that would so soon spread abroad. He fought shy of public curiosity and avoided questions at which his face might betray the cause of such a determination. And he trembled and became profoundly sad every time, like now, the matter was alluded to. Until then nothing had transpired.

It was thought in the town from day to day that he would go to Madrid to join his bride. Nevertheless, Manuel Antonio, whose olfactory sense was superior to that of all his contemporaries, had scented something. And with the tenacity and dissimulation of an Isabella of England, he began to collect bits of news and piece them together in such a way that at the present time he was very near the truth.

"You seem very sad, Luisito," he said to him suddenly. "You look more like making your will than being married."

The count was affected, and not knowing what to say, he answered, with a forced smile:

"Marriage is a very serious step."

He then tried to beat a retreat, but Manuel Antonio retained him again.

He wanted to get a key to the enigma at all costs, and to have his suspicions confirmed, so seconded by Maria Josefa, who knew better than he what line to adopt, he kept up the conversation for some time on the difficult subject. Luis was on thorns. He kept looking at Amalia, as if he were claiming what she had been obliged to concede him. The lady at last rose, put her head out of the door, and then resumed her seat. In a few moments Josefina's pale, gentle face appeared. She cast her sad eyes over the room, and at a sign from her G.o.dmother she directed her steps to the library. She pa.s.sed the count, he half turned towards her and gave her a rapid, anxious look, which did not escape the sharp eyes of his interlocutors. The child raised her eyes shining with a happy smile to his. It was a magnetic shock that suddenly filled her childish heart with joy. The guests tried to keep her, but obedient to the command of her G.o.dmother she went on to the library. A few minutes afterwards, Quinones sharp voice was heard:

"Is not the Conde de Onis there? Why does he not come in?"

"I am coming, Don Pedro," returned Luis, quickly, glad to escape from the boring group.

On his entering the library, in less time than it takes to tell, a terrible scene took place that put everything in commotion, and terrified the guests. Don Pedro, with the cards in his hand, was with Jaime Moro and Don Enrique Valero. Saleta, who made the fourth, was sitting talking to the chaplain behind him. Three or four people were standing round the table watching the game. Josefina was near the n.o.ble Grandee with her arms crossed, waiting for the benediction before going to bed. At the count's entrance, Quinones darted a rapid, sharp glance at him, and then gave one of deep hatred at the child, as he said, with a sarcastic smile:

"Ah, do you want your blessing? Take your blessing."