Nieves was what is called an exemplary wife, without a dark page in her history, without a thought of disloyalty to her husband, a coquette only in her dress and in the adornment of her person, and even in these practicing no alluring arts, content to obey slavishly the dictates of fashion.

Her ideal, if she had any, was to lead a comfortable, elegant existence, enjoying the consideration of the world. She had married when she was very young, Don Victoriano settling on her some thousands of dollars, and on the wedding-day her father had called her into his magisterial office and, keeping her standing before him as if she were a criminal, had charged her to respect and obey the husband she had chosen. She obeyed and respected him.

And her obedience and respect were a torture to Don Victoriano, who sought in marriage a compensation for the long years he had spent in his law office; years of loneliness during which his arduous labors and confinement to business had prevented him from forming any tender tie or cultivating gentle affections, permitting him at the most some hasty pleasure, some reckless and exciting adventure, which did not satisfy his heart. He fancied that the beautiful daughter of the President of the Court would requite him for all the tender joys he had missed and he found with vain and bitter disappointment that Nieves saw in him only the grave husband who is accepted with docility, without repugnance, nothing more. Respecting against his will the peace of this superficial being, he neither could nor dared disturb it, and he fretted his soul with unavailing longings, hastening to the crisis of maturity and multiplying the white patches that streaked his black hair.

When the child was born Don Victoriano hoped to repay himself with interest in new and holy caresses, to take solace in a pure oasis of affection. But the requirements of his position, the hurry of business, the complex obligations and the implacable cares of his existence, interposed themselves between him and a father's joys. He saw his daughter only from a distance, barely succeeding, when the coffee was brought in, in having her for awhile on his knee. And then came the first warnings of his disease.

From the time in which his malady declared itself with all its afflicting symptoms, Nieves had still less of her husband's society than before; it seemed to her as if she had returned to the rosy days of her girlhood, when she flitted about like a butterfly and played at lovers with her companions, who wrote her fictitious love-letters of an innocent nature, which they put under her pillow.

She never had had much amusement since that time. A great deal of amusement was to be found in the routine of a methodical Madrid life! Yes, there was a period during which the Marquis de Cameros, a rich young client of Don Victoriano's, had come to the house with some frequency, and he had even been asked to dine with them three or four times, without ceremony. Nieves remembered that the Marquis had cast many furtive glances at her, and that they had always met him, by chance, at whatever theater they went to. It did not go beyond this.

Nieves was now in the bloom of her second youth—between twenty-nine and thirty—terrible epoch in a woman's life; and if it brought her no red passion flowers, at least she wished to adorn herself with the romantic forget-me-nots of the poet. It seemed to Nieves that in the porcelain vase of her existence a flower had been wanting, and the fragile blue spray came to complete the beauty of the drawing-room toy. Bah! What harm was there in all this? It was a childish adventure. Those flowers, preserved between the leaves of a costly prayer-book, inspired her only with thoughts as pallid and sapless as the poor petals now pressed and dry.

She had fastened the blue spray in her bosom. How well it looked among the folds of the Écru lace!

"Tell me, mamma," Victorina had said to her that night before going to bed, "did Segundo give you those pretty flowers?"

"Oh, I don't remember—yes, I think that GarcÍa picked them for me."

"Will you give them to me to keep in my little satchel?"

"Go, child, go to bed quickly. Mademoiselle, see that she says her prayers!"