The voice of the sick girl would break the spell.

“Eh, child, what are you thinking about? How romantic those girls brought up in the provinces are!”

The sharp and clear-sighted eyes of Pilar fastened themselves, as she said this, on LucÍa’s face, where she descried a faint shadow, a sort of gray veil extending from the forehead and the temples to the circles under the eyes, and a certain sunkenness at the corners of the mouth. Her morbid curiosity was awakened, inspiring her with a desire to dissect for her pastime this simple heart. Her unerring woman’s instinct had revealed many things to her, and unable to content herself with a discreet guess, she desired to obtain the confidence of LucÍa. It would be one more emotion for her to enjoy during her stay at the springs.

“I don’t know what I was thinking about—nothing,” answered LucÍa, calling to her aid the most commonplace of excuses and the most common.

“Because it sometimes seems as if you were sad, pretty one; and I don’t know why you should be sad, for you are precisely in the most delightful part of the honeymoon. Ah, you are to be envied! Miranda is very agreeable. He has good manners, a good presence.”

“Yes, indeed; a very good presence,” repeated LucÍa, like an echo.

“And he dotes upon you. Why, any one may see that. True, he goes about a good deal with my brother—but what would you have, child? All men are like that. The chief thing is that when they are with one they should be amiable and affectionate—and that they should not be jealous. No, that good quality, at least, Miranda has; he is not jealous.”

LucÍa turned red as fire, and, stooping down, gathered a handful of dry leaves from the ground, in order to hide her confusion; then she amused herself crumbling them between her thumb and forefinger and blowing the dust into the air.

“And yet,” continued Pilar, “any one else in his place—No, see, if I were a man, I don’t know what I should have done—this thing of having a stranger escorting one’s bride for so many days—in that way, in such close company—and precisely when——”

At this direct and brutal thrust, LucÍa raised her head, and fixed on her friend the ingenuous but dignified and severe glance which at times shone in her eyes. Pilar, skillful in her tactics, drew back in order the better to make her spring.

“It is true that any one who knew you and him, would be just as unsuspicious as Miranda. You, as we all know, a little saint, an angel in a niche; and he—he is a gentleman of the old school, notwithstanding his eccentricities—he is as honorable as the Cid. He takes it from far back. I have known him very well for a long time past,” declared Pilar, who, like all young girls of the middle class who have mixed in good society, was eager to have it appear that she knew everybody.

“You—you have known him for a long time?” murmured LucÍa, conquered, offering the sick girl her arm to lean upon.

“Yes, child. He goes to Madrid every year; sometimes to spend the whole winter there, but generally only a month or two in the spring. He has little liking for society; he was invited to several houses, for his father, the Carlist chief, was a distinguished man in his part of the country, and he is connected with the Puenteanchas and with the Mijares, who are also Urbietas, but he was so chary of his society that every one was dying to have him. Once, because he danced a rigadoon, at Puenteancha’s, with Isabelita Novelda, they teased her about it all the evening—they said she could now undertake to tame wild beasts; that she could take Plevna without firing a gun—Isabelita was as proud as a peacock, and it turned out that the Puenteancha had requested him to dance, as a favor to her, and that he had consented, saying that he would dance with the first woman he met—he met Isabelita and he asked her. Fancy how the silly girl looked when it was known! After being convinced that she had made a conquest! Her nose grew longer than it was, and it was long enough already—ha, ha!”

The sick girl’s laughter ended in a cough—a little cough that tickled her throat and took away her breath, compelling her to sit down on one of the rustic benches of the park. LucÍa slapped her gently on the back without speaking, not wishing to say a word that might change the current of the conversation. Her eyes spoke for her.

“I can tell you it was a dreadful disappointment,” resumed Pilar, when she had recovered her breath. “The hundreds of thousands of francs which his father had laid by for him would have suited the Noveldita exactly—but they say that he does not like women!”

“He does not like women?” said LucÍa, as if the pronoun he could refer to only one person.

“They say, however, that as a son he has few equals—he pets his mother like a baby. She is said to be a woman of great refinement, belonging to the French aristocracy—extremely delicate in her health, and I even think that long ago, when she was young——”

The sick girl tapped her forehead significantly with her forefinger.

“It seems the father desired that the child should be born on Spanish soil and he brought his wife before her confinement to Ondarroa, his native place; they accustomed the boy to speak Spanish, except with his nurse, with whom he spoke the Basque dialect. Paco Mijares, who is a relation of his and knows all about it, told me so.”

LucÍa listened eagerly, drinking in every word with avidity, to all these insignificant details.

“He has curious fancies and caprices. At one time he took the notion to work and entered a commercial house. After that he studied medicine and surgery, and I understand that he put Rubio and Camison in the shade. In Madrid he went to the hospitals to study for pleasure; at the time of the war he did the same thing. Do you know where I sometimes used to meet him in Madrid? In the Retiro, looking fixedly at the large lake. What is the matter, child?”

LucÍa, with closed eyes and deathly pale, leaned back against the trunk of the tree that shaded the bench on which they sat. When she opened her eyes, the shadow on her temples was more marked, and her gaze wandered like that of a person recovering from a swoon.

“I don’t know—I sometimes seem to lose consciousness in that way. It is as if there were a sinking here,” she murmured, laying her hand on her heart.

“It is as I thought,” said Pilar to herself. “She has begun her capers early,” she added, in her own mind, cynically. Night was falling rapidly; a cold breeze stirred the foliage of the trees; the two friends, shivering, drew their wraps closer around them. At the same moment two dark figures appeared at the end of the avenue. They were those of Miranda and Perico, who manifested some surprise at finding LucÍa and Pilar in the park at this late hour.

“A pretty way, a pretty way to cure yourself! The devil! you’ll be lucky if you don’t get an attack of pneumonia for this! get up, you crazy girl; come, come!”

Pilar rose, weak and pale, and took Miranda’s arm. Perico offered his to LucÍa, whose natural vigor of constitution had by this time got the better of her momentary faintness.

“I doubt if she can take the waters to-morrow,” the latter said to her companion. “She was rather excited to-day, and now the reaction shows itself in fatigue.”

“I wager she would be strong enough, strong enough, if I offered to let her go to the Casino!”

“Ah, Periquillo of my soul!” cried the sick girl, whose fine ear had not lost a word of the conversation, “will you let me go, eh? What harm would that do me? Miranda, you intercede for me.”

“Once in a while—it might be good for her—it would serve to distract her.”

“Don’t mind what he says, Gonzalvo. SeÑor Duhamel says she ought not to go, and who knows best, she or the doctor?” said LucÍa.

“And you?” asked Perico, incited to a touch of gallantry by the hour, the sight of the husband walking in front, and his inveterate habits,—“and you, young and pretty as you are, why do you not come to the Casino? All that finery that is lying idle in your trunks would be better employed where it could be seen. Come, make up your mind, make up your mind, and I will bring you a bunch of camellias like the one the Swede carried last night.”

“I have no desire to eclipse the Swede,” said LucÍa, with a smile. “Where would she be if I were to show myself?”

“Well, although you say it in jest, in jest, it is the simple truth,” and Perico traitorously lowered his voice. “You are worth a dozen Swedes”; and in a louder tone, he added: “If Juanito Albares did not make such a fool of himself, deuce a one would look at her, would look at her.”

(Juanito Albares, as Perico familiarly called him, was a duke, a grandee of Spain, a count and a marquis, and had I know not how many other titles besides, a fact worthy to be borne in mind by the future biographers of the elegant Gonzalvo.)

“Where are your eyes, then?” exclaimed LucÍa, with Spanish frankness. “You have great audacity to say that! The Swede is beautiful! Her complexion is whiter than milk, and then her eyes——”

“Put no confidence in whiteness,” interposed Pilar, “while Venus’s towel and Paris white are to be bought. She is too large.”

“Too tall,” declared Perico, like the fox in the fable.

“Never mind,” said Miranda, in a low voice, to Pilar. “We will make that obstinate brother of yours listen to reason, and you shall go some night to the Casino. A pretty thing it would be if you were to leave Vichy without seeing the theater and listening to the concert. It would be unheard of.”

“Ah, Miranda! You are my guardian angel! If there is no other way of accomplishing it, you and I will run away some night—an elopement. We will do as they do in the novels: you shall come on a fiery steed, I will get up behind, and let them overtake us if they can. We will first put Perico and LucÍa under lock and key, and leave them there to do penance for their sins, eh? What do you say?”

When they reached the entrance to the chÂlet, where lights were already shining among the dark foliage of the trees, Miranda said to himself:

“This one is more amusing than my wife. At least she says something, if it is only nonsense; and she is cheerful, although she has half of one lung God knows in what condition.”

“This girl is more insipid than water, than water,” Perico, on his side, said to himself on parting from LucÍa.

Meantime the longed-for day of the evening entertainment arrived. Pilar was in the habit of spending a couple of hours daily in the Salle des Dames of the Casino, generally from one to three o’clock in the afternoon. The Salle des Dames is one of the many attractions of the fine building which is the center of the gayety of the town, where the ladies who are subscribers to the Casino can take refuge without fear of masculine intrusion; there they are at home, and rule with absolute sway; they play the piano, embroider, chat, and sometimes indulge in a sherbet or some sweetmeat or bon-bon, which they nibble with as much enjoyment as if they were mice let loose in a cupboard full of dainties. It might be taken for a modern Moorish harem, a gynecÆum, not hidden within the modest shadow of the home, but situated in the most public of all possible places. There congregated all the feminine stars of the firmament of Vichy, and there Pilar met assembled the small but brilliant Spanish-American colony—the de AmÉzegas, Luisa Natal, the Countess of Monteros; and there was established a sort of Spanish coterie which, if not very numerous, was none the less animated and gay. While some blonde Englishwoman executed pieces of classic music on the piano, and the Frenchwomen seized the occasion to display exquisite worsted-work, at which they worked at the rate of two or three stitches an hour, the Spanish women, more sincere, gave themselves up frankly to idleness and spent the time chatting and fanning themselves. A fine geographical globe at the farther end of the parlor seemed asking what was its object and aim in such a place; and in exchange, the portraits of the two sisters of Louis XVI, Victoria and Adelaide, traditional dames of Vichy, with powdered hair and rosy, smiling faces, presided over the exhibition of frivolity continually being celebrated in their honor. There were whisperings, like the flutterings of bird’s wings in an aviary; sounds of laughter, like the sound of pearls dropping into a crystal cup; the silky flutter of fans, the click of the sticks, the noise made by the casters of the chairs rolling over the waxed floors, the frou-frou of skirts, like the rustling of insects’ wings. The air was perfumed by the mingled odors of gardenia, toilet vinegar, smelling-salts, and perfumery. On chairs and tables lay trinkets and articles of adornment, long-handled silk parasols embroidered in gold, work-boxes of Russian leather, work-baskets of straw ornamented with worsted balls and tassels; here a lace scarf, there a lawn handkerchief; here a bunch of flowers exhaling in death their sweetest perfume, there a dotted tulle veil, and, resting on it, the pins used to fasten it. The group of Spanish women, headed by Lola AmÉzega, who was of a very resolute character, maintained a certain independence and intimacy among themselves, very different from the reserve of the Englishwomen, between whom and the Spanish group there was even perceptible a feeling of secret hostility and mutual contempt.

It afforded great diversion to the Spanish group to see the Englishwomen gravely take out a newspaper, as large as a sheet, from their pockets, and read it from the first word to the last.

Pilar had been unable to persuade LucÍa to accompany her to the Salle des Dames; the shyness and timidity resulting from her provincial education deterred her from going; she dreaded, more than fire, the inquisitive glances of those women, who examined her toilet as minutely as a skillful confessor examines the recesses of the conscience of his penitent. Pilar, on the contrary, was there in her natural element. Her rather shrill voice yielded in power only to the Cuban lisp of the leader, Lola AmÉzega.

Let us listen to the concert:

“Well, I bought this to-day,” Lola was saying unconstrainedly, as she turned up the sleeve of her pink muslin gown, trimmed with dark garnet bows, and displaying to view a bracelet, from which hung a little pig with curled-up tail and swelling sides, executed in fine enamel.

“I have one in another style,” said Amalia AmÉzega, showing a pig no less resplendent than her sister’s, which dug its snout into the lace of her necktie.

“Heavens! what an ugly fashion!” exclaimed Luisa Natal, a belle whose attractions were now on the wane, and who was very careful to use no ornaments except such as might serve to enhance her beauty. “For my part, I would not wear such creatures. They make one think of black-pudding, don’t they, countess?”

The Countess of Monteros, a Spanish woman of the old-fashioned type, very devout and somewhat austere, nodded in the affirmative.

“I don’t know what they are going to invent next,” she said slowly. “I have seen in the shops, elephants, lizards, frogs, and toads, and even spiders,—in short, the most disgusting creatures possible,—as ornaments for young ladies. In my youthful days we had no fancy for such oddities; fine brilliants, beautiful pearls, a ruby heart—and, yes, we wore cameos, also, but it was a charming caprice—one had one’s likeness or that of some virgin or saint engraved on the stone.”

There was a brief silence; the AmÉzegas, subjugated by the imperiousness of that authoritative voice, did not venture to reply.

“See, countess,” said Pilar, at last, delighted to have an opportunity to enrage the AmÉzegas, “what is really pretty is that pin of Luisa’s.”

Luisa drew from her hair the long golden pin with its head of amethyst set with diamonds.

“The Swede wore one like it yesterday,” she said, handing it to the countess. “She had on the whole set—earrings, a necklace of amethyst balls, and the pin. She looked magnificent with those and the heliotrope gown.”

“Last night?” asked Pilar.

“Yes, at the theater. The other was gloomy and listless as usual; at ten he entered her box and handed her the customary bouquet of camellias and white azaleas; they say it costs him seventy francs a night. It is a regular addition to his bill at the hotel.”

“That nephew of mine has neither shame nor discretion,” said the Countess of Monteros gravely.

“A married man!” said Luisa Natal, who lived very happily with her husband, who blindly obeyed all her caprices.

“And is it known, finally, whether the Swede is the daughter or the wife of that baron of—of—I never can remember his name—well, of that old man who escorts her?” asked the countess, allowing herself to be drawn at last, in spite of her dignity, into the current of curiosity.

“Of Holdteufel?” asked Amalia AmÉzega, in a sing-song voice. “Bah! who knows! But judging by the liberty he allows her he would seem to be her husband rather than her father.”

“One needs to have effrontery,” continued Luisa Natal, with gentle and smiling condemnation, “to make one’s self the talk of every one in that way.”

“The idea!” said Pilar, in her thin voice. “Why, that is what he wants. What do you suppose? The point of the thing and the pleasure of it are in being talked about.”

“Juanito was always the same—always fond of making a noise,” murmured the countess softly, remembering how her nephew, when a wild boy of ten, used to go to her house and give her a headache, teasing her for a thousand nonsensical things.

“Why, the day before yesterday——”

Eager curiosity was expressed in every face. The group drew their chairs closer together and for a full minute a sound of casters rolling over the floors could be heard.

“The day before yesterday,” continued Amalia AmÉzega, lowering her voice, “she went to the shooting match——”

“Do you shoot now?” asked Pilar and Luisa Natal simultaneously.

“A little, for amusement,” and Lola smoothed down the straight black fringe of hair that covered her forehead to within half an inch of the eyebrows, making her look like a page of the Middle Ages, setting off the tropical pallor of her face and her large eyes like those of a child, but of a malicious and precocious child.

“Well,” continued Amalia, seeing that her audience was listening attentively, “Gimenez, and the little Marquis of CaÑahejas, and Monsieur Anatole were there, and they were all talking about a paragraph in Figaro, alluding to a scandal caused at one of the most fashionable watering places in France, or all Europe, by the insane passion of a Spanish grandee for a Swedish lady——”

“Only the initials of the names were given,” added Lola; “but it was as clear as daylight. And to make it more clear it said, ‘This worthy grandson of the Count of Almaviva spends a fortune in flowers!’”

A chorus of laughter broke from the circle. Lola had a way of saying things with a certain lisp and a movement of the eyelids that greatly added to their piquancy.

“And she? How does she receive his attentions?” asked Pilar.

“She?” replied Lola. “Oh, every night, on receiving the bouquet, she answers invariably: ‘Dhanks, tuke, you are too amiaple!’”

They laughed more loudly than before. Even the countess smiled, holding her fan before her face for the sake of propriety.

“Hist!” said Luisa Natal, “there she comes.”

“The Swede!” exclaimed Pilar.

They all turned round, greatly excited. The door of the Ladies’ Parlor opened slowly, an old man, dressed with elegant simplicity, with white side-whiskers, the rest of his face being smoothly shaven, stood in a courtly attitude at the threshold of the door, while a tall and graceful woman passed into the room; her classic beauty was set off by her gown of black silk, close-fitting and sparkling with jet; the hat of tulle, trimmed with golden wheat-ears, rested on her brow like a diadem; her walk was noble and queenly. Without deigning to salute any one, she went straight to the piano and, seating herself before it, proceeded to play a mazourka of Chopin’s in a masterly manner. Her attitude served to display to advantage the stately grace of her figure—the long and rounded arms, the hips, the shoulder-blades, which at every movement of her white hands defined themselves clearly through the tight-fitting bodice.

“Is it not true,” said Pilar in a low voice to Luisa Natal, “that if LucÍa Miranda were to dress like her, she would resemble her somewhat in her figure?”

“Bah!” murmured Luisa Natal, “the Mirandita has not an atom of chic.”

From the group of Englishwomen now broke forth the energetic hissing sound which in every language signifies “Silence! hold your tongues and listen, or at least permit others to listen.” The Spanish women touched one another with their elbows and imperturbably went on with their whispering.

“Do you see that man?” said Lola AmÉzega.

“Who? who? who?” They all asked in chorus.

“Who do you suppose? Albares. There, there at the window. Take care. Don’t let him see that you are observing him.”

Looking in at the window overlooking the roof of the Casino was to be seen, in effect, a youthful, almost boyish face defined against the porcelain-like whiteness of the necktie, among whose folds rested one of those agates called “cat’s eyes,” on which the caprice of fashion has of late bestowed so exaggerated a value. A morning-suit of a soft, exquisite shade of gray, a fine beaver hat, a gardenia in the button-hole, and chamois gloves of a rather bright color—such were the details of the costume of the inquisitive young man who was thus exploring with his gaze the Salle des Dames. He presented a strange mixture of weakness and strength; with an under-sized frame, he had the muscles of a Hercules. Gymnastic exercises, fencing, riding, and hunting had apparently hardened a constitution, which nature had made weakly, almost sickly. He was short of stature, his limbs were delicate as a woman’s, but the muscles were of steel. That this was the case was apparent from the manner in which his garments hung upon him; from a certain virile turn of the knees and the shoulders; in addition to this he had that air of haughty superiority which wealth, birth, and the habit of command, united, bestow.

But if the duke had expected to be rewarded for his indiscretion, he was doomed to disappointment; for the Swede, after she had played with perfect self-possession and consummate skill some half-dozen mazourkas, arose with no less majesty than she had displayed on her entrance to the room, and without looking to the right or left walked straight toward the door. This opened as if by magic, and the diplomat with the white side-whiskers presented himself, grave and courteous as before, and offered her his arm. It was the exit of a queen, trÈs rÉussie, as the group of Frenchwomen said among themselves.

“One would think she was the Princess Micomicona,” said Lola AmÉzega, who had spent no less than two hours before the looking-glass, that morning, practicing the regal walk of the Swede.

“What an air!” said Luisa Natal. “No, it cannot be denied that she is a handsome woman. What a figure! and what hands! Have you noticed them?”

“What a disappointment for Albares!” exclaimed Amalia; “she did not even know he was there.”

Every eye was turned toward the window. The duke had disappeared.

“Now he has no doubt gone to the park to try to meet her; shall we go see?”

“Yes, yes; the sight will be amusing.”

They rose, and hastily gathering up their fans, parasols, and veils, hurried toward the door.

“Eh, young ladies!” said the Countess of Monteros, “don’t walk so fast. I am not so young as you are, and I shall be left behind. By my faith,” she added, under her breath, “when I see my fine nephew I shall tell him what I think of him for making that poor Matilde, who is an angel, grieve herself to death by his conduct, as he is doing.”

While Pilar amused herself in a manner so agreeable to her inclinations, LucÍa sat waiting for her on the balcony of the chÂlet. At this hour neither Miranda nor Perico was in the house. The Casino had swallowed up every one. Only at rare intervals was a passer-by to be seen in this retired neighborhood. The only sound to be heard was the monotonous noise of the machine on which the daughter of the concierge was sewing. In the garden, the roses, drunk with the sunshine which they had been quaffing all the morning, exhaled themselves in perfumes; even the cold white roses showed the effects of the heat in a tinge, like pale flesh-color, but flesh-color still. It seemed as if all the odors of the garden had mingled together to form one sole odor, penetrating, powerful, inebriating, like the fragrance of a single rose, but a rose of gigantic size—a glowing rose that exhaled from its purple mouth an intoxicating and deadly fragrance. LucÍa had taken her work and busied herself at it for a while, but after a quarter of an hour or so the cushion fell from her lap, the thimble slipped from her finger, and she sat with vacant gaze fixed on the clump of rose bushes, until at last her eyelids closed of themselves, and leaning her forehead against the vine that covered the balcony, she abandoned herself to the delicious enjoyment of the balmy air, unconscious of external sights or sounds, scarcely breathing. Two months before she could not have remained quiet for half an hour; the beauty of nature would have incited her to physical activity. Now, on the contrary, it invited her to repose, it produced in her a sort of half-conscious torpor, like that of the lizard sleeping in the sun.

One afternoon Pilar, returning from the clubhouse, found LucÍa more pensive than usual.

“Silly child,” she said, “of what are you thinking? If you were to go to the Casino it would amuse you greatly.”

“Pilarcita,” murmured LucÍa, throwing her arms around the neck of her friend, “will you keep a secret for me if I tell you one?”

The eyes of the sick girl lighted up.

“Of course I will! open your heart to me, child. In confidence, is it not so? You may tell me anything. I have seen so many things—there is nothing that could surprise me.”

“Listen,” said LucÍa, “I want to know, at all costs, how Don Ignacio Artegui’s mother is.”

Pilar drew back, disappointed; then laughing, with her cynical laugh, she cried:

“Is that all? A great secret that! What a big handful three flies make.”

“For Heaven’s sake!” entreated LucÍa uneasily, “don’t give a hint of this to any one. I am dying to know, but if any one should hear—Miranda or——”

“Simpleton! I shall soon learn what you wish to know, and without any one hearing anything about it. I have a hundred ways of finding out. I promise you your curiosity shall be gratified.”

Pilar tapped LucÍa, who looked serious and a little confused, two or three times on the cheek.

“Are we going to take a walk to-day, madam nurse?” she asked.

“Yes, and you shall drink some milk in Vesse. But put on a warmer dress, for Heaven’s sake; you are so careless, you are quite capable of exposing yourself to taking a cold. Have you not observed how fragrant the roses are? In Leon there are hardly any roses; I remember that I used to place all I could find before the image of the Virgin, which I have there in my room.”