“Mamma, here is some one with a love-letter for you.”

“Who? This girl?”

“Yes, SeÑora—from the SeÑoritas Romera,” said the young Galician.

“Come here, let me see. Perhaps it is something that requires immediate attention.”

But no sooner had she torn open the envelope than she burst into a laugh.

“How crazy I am! Without my glasses—Here, child, read it you.”

Rogelio unfolded the missive and began in a pompous voice:

“High and mighty and most tormented lady: if your beauty——”

“See, child; have sense and read what is set down there; there is a terrible draught and the rheumatism in my joints won’t allow me to stand here listening to nonsense.”

In his natural tone of voice Rogelio read as follows:

“Most respected friend: Esclavita Lamas, the bearer, will inform you of the favor she desires; all we can say is that during the time she was with us, she was most exemplary in her conduct and fulfilled her duties faithfully; so much so that we are very sorry to lose her, as we have no fault to find with her; quite the contrary.

“Your old and affectionate friends,

“Pascuala and Mercedes Romera.”

“Is there nothing more, child?”

“There is a foolish postscript that it is not necessary to read.”

“A foolish postscript?”

“Yes; asking why no one ever sees me now and saying that I must be grown a fine-looking young fellow. The stereotyped, silly compliments——”

“I am always telling you so, child!” exclaimed his mother, with vexation. “You never go to spend ten minutes at the house of these poor ladies, who are so fond of you. They have seen you so petted that they will think it is all my fault. Well, I speak to you often enough about them. Pascuala and Mercedes! If you don’t go, I shall.”

“But, mater terribilis, when I put my foot in that reception room, I get so sleepy that I can do nothing but yawn!”

“Well, they are a pair of saints.”

“Amen; I don’t dispute their sanctity; I am only saying that they are very tiresome and that they never stop talking. They keep up a duet like the Germans in La Diva. ‘Rogelio, how is mamma?’ ‘And how are you getting on with your studies?’” And he imitated the husky voice and Malagan accent of the old maids.

“What nonsense you talk,” said SeÑora de PardiÑas, repressing a smile, “I don’t know why Pascuala and Mercedes should make you sleepy.”

“Unfathomable mysteries of the human heart. Profound arcana. In that dimora casta e pura a fatal narcotic pervades the atmosphere.”

“Humbug!”

During this skirmish between mother and son the girl stood waiting, motionless, with her eyes fixed upon the ground. DoÑa Aurora, at last remembering her presence, turned toward her:

“Excuse me, child; this letter says that you will tell me what you have come to see me about. Will you come upstairs?”

“No, SeÑora. Don’t put yourself to any trouble on my account. Here will do just as well.”

“Well, let me hear. Is it some favor you wish to ask of me?”

“Favor? No, SeÑora. I would like to enter into service in your house—or in the house of some other Galician family,” she added, after a pause.

DoÑa Aurora looked fixedly at the petitioner and fancied she reddened slightly under her gaze.

“You—were not contented at the SeÑoritas de Romera’s, then?”

“Yes, SeÑora, I was contented enough—and I think they were pleased with me, too. You can see that from the letter they gave me. As far as the SeÑoritas are concerned I would be in glory, for they are as good as they can be, not belittling others. God grant them every prosperity! Only that sometimes—there are good people that one doesn’t find one’s self at home with. Those ladies are from Malaga, in the Andalusian country, and they have customs and dishes that I don’t understand. Even their way of talking is strange to me. When they tell me to do a thing and I don’t understand, I feel as if I had heard my death sentence. And, then, SeÑora, the truth before all—not to be among people of one’s own country, never to hear it mentioned, even, makes one’s heart very sad. For the half of the wages and with double the work I would rather serve a person from my own place.”

All this she said with an air of so much sincerity that DoÑa Aurora’s good-will toward her increased, prepossessed in her favor as she already was by the respectable and decorous bearing of the girl, so different from the bold manners of the Madrid Menegildas. Only there was something in the girl’s story that was not altogether clear to her. There must be some mystery in all this. Before the door the driver was smoking his cigarette, while the hack, with drooping head and projecting lower lip, was dreaming of abundant fodder and delightful meadows.

“Child,” said SeÑora PardiÑas. “I am going to sit down in the carriage. As I am not as young as you are I feel tired standing, and my legs are bending under me. If you don’t want to go upstairs, come over to the carriage with me.”

The little Galician helped DoÑa Aurora to settle herself in the vehicle, and the latter when she was seated said:

“Tell me, if you were so greatly attached to your country how was it that you came here?”

Ah, this time there was not the slightest doubt of it; it was a blush, and a vivid blush, that dyed the girl’s cheeks. And when she answered one must be deaf, and very deaf, not to perceive that she stammered, especially at the first words.

“Sometimes—one has—to do what one’s heart least prompts one to do, SeÑora. We are children of fate. I was brought up by my uncle, the parish priest of Vimieiro. It was the will of God to take him to himself and I was left without a protector. To get one’s bread one must work. I was a queen in my own house; now I am a servant. God be praised, and may we never lose the power of our hands or our health.”

“Why did you not go out to service there?” persisted SeÑora PardiÑas, who had a keener scent than a bloodhound where a secret was concerned. And that the secret was there she could not doubt on seeing that it was not now a blush but a hot flame that passed over Esclavita’s face.

“I—I couldn’t find a place,” she answered, in choking accents. “And then, as everybody there knows me, I was ashamed.”

DoÑa Aurora PardiÑas reflected for some two minutes, and speaking gently to soften the harshness of the words:

“Let us see,” she said. “You can refer only to the SeÑoritas de Romera who—knew nothing about you before you went to their house. Isn’t it so? It would be well, then,—you will see that yourself,—if you could find some one here who knew you at home who would recommend you.”

The girl hesitated for an instant, and then said:

“The SeÑorito Gabriel Pardo de la Lage and his sister know who I am.”

“Rita Pardo? The wife of the engineer? I am very well acquainted with her. And you say that she knows you?”

The girl answered by raising her hand and shrugging her shoulders as much as to say, “Why, ever since I was born!”

“Well, child,” rejoined SeÑora PardiÑas, frankly, “I am sorry that you should leave the Romeras. You could not find a better house or better ladies.”

“I do not deny that,” replied Esclavita with greater emphasis than before, if possible; “only that I have told you the truth, SeÑora, as if I were talking to my dead mother or to the confessor. I was seized with homesickness, and if I hadn’t left them I think I should have lost my reason or have gone straight to my grave. I couldn’t eat. I would go off by myself to a corner to think. I grew paler and paler every day, and so thin that my clothes hung loose on me. At night I had fits of choking, as if some one was tightening a rope about my neck. But in spite of all that I was loth to say anything to the SeÑoritas. They saw it themselves, though, and they were the first to advise me, if I did not go back home, to look for a place with some family from there! ‘Child, you are so altered that you don’t look like the same person,’ were the very words they used.”

As she said this, Esclavita’s chin trembled like a child’s when it is making an effort to keep from bursting into sobs. Her eyes could not be seen, as she had cast them down, according to her wont.

“Calm yourself,” SeÑora PardiÑas said kindly. She was beginning to conceive an irresistible sympathy for this girl, whose bearing was so modest and whose heart was apparently so tender. How different she was from the impudent servants of Madrid, the gadabouts of the suburbs, shameless termagants who could not stay in any decent house. It was not two hours ago that Pepa, the house-maid, for a mere nothing had thrown aside all decency and scolded like a fishwoman. This little Galician might have had—well, some slip—for the reasons she gave for leaving her native place did not seem all clear; but her whole appearance was so—well, so like that of an honest woman—God alone knew how the poor thing had been tempted.

“See,” she said, putting her head out of the carriage door, “for the present I cannot give you a decided answer as to whether I will take you or not. Come to the house to see me to-morrow morning about this time. I should be glad to—but I must think the matter over. If I should not be able to take you myself, I will look for a place for you with some other Galician family. Tell me your conditions, in case any one else should want to know.”

Esclavita, meantime, stood rolling an end of her black silk handerchief between her thumb and forefinger.

“May God reward you!” she answered. “As for the wages, a dollar more or a dollar less makes no difference to me. Work does not frighten me. I would not engage as a cook, for I don’t know how to make those fine dishes that are the fashion now. I understand simple dishes like those of my native place. In everything else I think I could give satisfaction—in the cleaning, the mending, and the ironing. All I ask is that in the family you look for there should not be—well, men, who——”

“I understand, I understand,” interrupted DoÑa Aurora. And she added jestingly, “But in that case, tell me why you want to come to my house. Haven’t you seen that there is a man in it?”

And she pointed to Rogelio who, relieved from his embarrassment by his mother’s presence, stood leaning against the carriage door, looking at the girl. Esclavita followed the direction of SeÑora PardiÑas’ hand; for the first time her eyes, green, changeful, sincere, rested on the student. After a pause she said with a smile:

“Is that young gentleman your son? May God spare him to you for many years. That isn’t the kind of man I mean, he is only a boy.”

Rogelio changed countenance as if he had received the most outrageous insult. He tried to disguise his annoyance by a laugh, but the laugh died away in his throat. It must be confessed that he even felt his eyes fill with tears of vexation. It was one of those moments of insensate and profound rage which must come at one time or another to the man whose childhood has been unduly prolonged; moments in which he desires, as if it were the highest good, to possess the bitter treasure of experience—sorrows, disappointments, trials, struggles, sickness, gray hairs, wrinkles, calamities, betrayal of friendship and of love—all, all, so that he may hear the supreme word, so that he may taste the fruit of good and evil, the immortal apple, golden on the one side, blood-red on the other. All, so that he may fulfill the destiny of humanity, all, so that he may pass through the cycle of life.