The Marquesa de San SalomÓ was talking to MarÍa.

“My dear friend,” she began, “I would not be the last to come and condole with you.”

“To pray with me?”

“Yes, to pray; but also to sympathise. I did not see you in church. Padre Paoletti told me that you had come and gone early; and I quite understood it. I long to talk to you and comfort you....”

“Comfort me?” said MarÍa much puzzled, “for my loneliness, my solitude ... but I have suffered long in silence, and the Lord has not denied me sweet consolation. What are we here for but to suffer? We have only to get that well into our minds and then no grief can find us unprepared.”

“Oh!” cried Pilar with eager admiration and kissing her friend, “how good you are! What a saint! What a beautiful exception in this wretched world! Folks ought to come and worship you and pray to you as much as if you were canonized.”

“No, no, you are wrong, very wrong. What if I were to tell you that I am dreadfully wicked?”

“You, wicked! you?” said Pilar looking as horrified as if the idea were rank blasphemy. “And if you are a sinner what am I? Tell me that.... What am I?” and she answered the question herself with a deep and prolonged sigh, the pathetic expression of a conscience that was too heavily laden. “It would be a marvel to me that there should be any saints, even if the occasions of sin were rare, and half the world lived in convents or in caves, setting each other a good example; but now, when liberty has multiplied the opportunities of vice, and every one does as he pleases, and there is hardly any one to set a worthy example, it is miraculous. That is why I say that you ought to be canonized; for in Madrid, which is beyond a doubt the wickedest place under the sun—and in this century which, as Padre Paoletti says, is the opprobrium of the ages—you have been able to defy the temptations of the world and are worthy to be compared with the penitents, and confessors, and even the martyrs of the Church.” She emphasised the last words with marked meaning.

“Oh! do not speak so,” said MarÍa who though she liked flattery was wont to conceal the fact.

“My dear, I think you admirable, wonderful,” added her friend with affectionate rapture. “For I am miles behind you though I long to be like you. Would that Heaven might grant me to take a single step alone and unhindered in the path of perfection in which you are treading, and on which I have not even started! Do you know what I should like? To be constantly with you, to go to pray with you, if you would allow it, to read what you read, to think as you think; and see whether in that way I should feel better inspired. For the present I will only ask you to give me something belonging to you—anything, a handkerchief for instance, that I may always wear it in my bosom as if it were a relic. I want always to touch something that you have touched. I would never be without it, because when I see your handkerchief it will remind me of you and of your goodness, and that will help me to conquer an evil thought or a bad impulse. Admire you? And ought I not admire you, dear angel? Indeed, ma petite, you do not know your own value. You will see, when you die people will fight for pieces of your garments.”

“Pilar, you are offending Heaven by your adulation!”

“It is only that you are so good that you do not like to hear it. Your brother in glory was just the same, but you are better than he.”

“Pilar, for God’s sake!” cried MarÍa, now really horrified.

“Yes, and greater than he; I say so. He was a saint but you are a martyr as well. You have reached the climax of Christian heroism. I know no living creature to compare with you, and I do not know whether to admire or to pity you most.”

MarÍa did not understand her.

“The name of saint seems to me too weak—and what name of horror can I give to the man who, having in his house such a treasure of goodness and piety, abandoned it, despised it and covered himself with ignominy by scorning gold for base metal, and filling the place of the angel Heaven had granted him for a wife with a....”

“Pilar! Good God! Are you speaking of my husband?”

“Oh, my dearest friend,” said the marquesa, colouring with excitement, “forgive me for being furious as I speak of it. I really cannot help it!”

“But Leon.... Pilar, you do not know what you are saying; my husband is a strictly moral man.”

It has been said that MarÍa was a woman of limited intellect though of fairly strong feelings; her nature lacked delicacy and refinement, but, at the same time, what was best in her was a basis of loyalty and honour and a vein of innate rectitude which is always accompanied by a certain confidence in the honesty of others. Her friend’s reticent insinuations aroused her indignation.

“I see,” said Pilar, “that I have been very rash and indiscreet. You have heard nothing.”

“I have heard nothing? What about?”

“Oh! I cannot tell you; I ought to have held my tongue. I thought that your mother....”

“Speak out—you mentioned my husband....”

“And now I am sorry for it.”

“Then my husband—then you mean to say—he believes in nothing—there is no hope for his soul—he is an atheist, an infidel ... but he is perfectly well conducted and blameless in his life....”

Pilar suddenly burst out laughing; her loud and impertinent mirth, lasting for some seconds, disturbed MarÍa beyond measure.

“If you call it blameless to desert his wife, who is a saint, and live with another ...” said her friend, in a sharp rough tone like that of a file on metal. MarÍa turned as pale as death, her eyes staring and her lips parted.

“With another!” The idea was not a new one, but the fact was a shock. She had anticipated the revelation by vague and timid suspicions; but a sad truth startles us even when it has been foreseen in a terrible dream. “With another, you said?”

“Yes, with another. All Madrid knows it but you.”

“You said—with another ...” repeated MarÍa who had half lost her wits and stood stunned and paralysed as though those two terrible words were a mass of stone that had fallen on her head.

“Yes, with another,” said Pilar, with another burst of laughter, which did not argue any very great reverence for the saint of her adoration.

“And who is it?” asked MarÍa with a flash of vehemence, her bewilderment suddenly changed to passionate excitement. “Who, I say, who?”

“I thought you knew, poor martyr! It is Pepa FÚcar, the daughter of the Marquis de FÚcar; the man whom all the papers call ‘the eminent FÚcar,’ because he has made a fortune by paving streets, laying down railroads, poisoning the country with his tobacco—which is made they say of dead leaves swept off the roads, and finally lending money to the government during the war, at two hundred per cent; a specimen man of the century, with a Haytian title; a product of parliamentary influence and work done by contract. He cannot bear the sight of me because, one evening at the Rioponces’, he began paying me compliments and I turned my back on him, and whenever I see him within hearing in a drawing-room I begin talking of the adulteration of tobacco, of the increase of asphalt pavements, of the nuisance of gas, and of the shoes with brown paper soles that he supplied to the troops.” And Pilar laughed sharply for the third time.

But MarÍa had not listened to her spiteful sketch of the Marquis de FÚcar. She heard nothing but the tumult in her own soul, the storm of a rebellion, of a revolution, like the stormy rousing of a sleeping crowd. The serpent that lay brooding in her heart suddenly brought forth a swarm of others that started into life, alert and vicious, gnawing, and vomiting fire. Her jealousy took the form of a legion of invisible reptiles, stinging and scorching her on every side; this was in fact the guise under which it presented itself to her imagination, which always conceived of mental experiences as analogous to physical sensations; to her a pleasure was actually a caress, and a pain a blow or a pinch or a stab. The poor saint and martyr had never in her life before felt anything like this, and she did not know what it meant. Her grief was compounded with terror and surprise, and the shock was so great that she forgot to turn to God, as might have seemed natural, or to pray for patience or resignation.

What was this? It was the Real suppressing the Artificial; the woman’s heart asserting its supremacy through the agency of a revolt of its imprisoned, but genuine, emotions. It was an entire revolution of woman’s nature claiming its rights, and throwing off all that was false and assumed to raise the triumphant standard of truth and of that nobler part which—whether she be lover, wife, or mother, good or bad—makes her a true woman; makes her the other half of man—the Eve to Adam—whether faithful or faithless, a heroine or a baggage. This revolution is sometimes occasioned by the passion of love; but not invariably, because love in its innocent simplicity yields to the sophistries and treacherous blandishments of its brother mysticism. What never fails to stir it up is the brutal and overwhelming passion of jealousy, so well painted by Calderon as the hydra whose double nature, diabolical and seraphical, betrays its birth as the hybrid offspring of Love, which is divine, and Envy, the daughter of all the devils. The sudden frenzy that had sprung up in MarÍa’s soul was more akin to its mother Envy than to its father Love. It was an instrument of torture and torment, a rack without respite, a fire that grew fiercer each instant. Her bigotry was suddenly shattered like a tower that has been undermined and blown to the winds. At that moment her soul was dark; God utterly eclipsed. With a cry of anguish and clasping her head in her hands she exclaimed: “Wretch! But you shall pay dearly for it!”

Just at this juncture her mother entered the room and perceiving that MarÍa had learnt all, she threw herself into her arms. MarÍa had no tears; her eyes were dry and sparkling. The marquesa puckered her face up to shed a tear she had ready, as we are prepared with sighs as we enter the house of death.

“Do not suppress your grief, my darling child. I see you know the worst. I would not have told you for fear of agitating your tender soul ... be calm. Pilar has told you? It is horrible, atrocious! but perhaps not irremediable.... For days I have been miserable; but be calm; let me see you resigned.”

Pilar thought it was her turn to speak again.

“The atrocity,” she said, “is all the greater under the circumstances. It is a villainous thing to betray any woman, but a saint like you.... What is society coming to? In its passion for abolishing it will at last abolish the soul! Oh! c’est dÉgoutant! and then the wretches wonder that a handful of brave men stand forth, determined that God shall not be pensioned off. They are furious because a standard is raised to rally those who are ready to do battle for Religion, the Mother of Duty. If they are conquered through treachery, which nowadays triumphs everywhere, they will return to the charge ... they will return again and again, till at last....”

As she spoke she had risen, and was now standing in front of a mirror that formed the door of a wardrobe and contemplating her interesting person, twisting from side to side to study the fall of her elegant mantle and the effect of her fashionable hat. Her dainty, ungloved hands arranged here a pleat and there a curl; and then she returned to her seat.

“Did you hear that he is living there?” said the marquesa to her daughter and softening the words with a kiss.

“With her?” cried MarÍa drawing aside from her mother’s embrace. “Where?”

“At Carabanchel. Leon was so reckless as to take a lodging close to Suertebella. There is a way through the park.”

“I will go there,” said MarÍa rising and pulling violently at the bell.

“My dear, be calm. You must not take it so.”

A maid answered the bell and MarÍa said: “My black dress.”

“Your black merino frock!” exclaimed her mother. “A pretty object you will look! No, no, if you go at all—and we will talk of that—you must dress as well and look as handsome and as nice as possible.”

“Oh dear!” cried MarÍa regretfully. “I have no gowns; nothing pretty or nice; I have given all my good things away.”

“And you think you can go in that merino rag? Foolish child! how little you know of men. Very well; go to find your husband a perfect guy, and you will see how much he cares. Nay, appearances rule the world.”

“But first let us decide whether you had better go at all,” suggested Pilar.

“Yes, I want to go ... I want to go,” MarÍa insisted, clasping her hands, and her eyes glared with fury.

“No tragedies, no scenes—eh?”

“I do not think it is safe for you to go there. If he were to offer you some grosser insult, if you were to meet Pepa face to face, or her child—supposing that the child is in its father’s arms—for they say he is devoted to it....”

“Its father?” said MarÍa “Why Federico is dead?”

“No, no,” said her friend, with the expression of cruel resolve that she might have put on while thrusting a needle through some wretched insect to add it to a collection. “No, do you not see? Your husband ...”

“Leon ... my husband ... Monina’s father!” exclaimed the poor woman. The fresh blow stunned her as the first had done.

“So the people choose to say,” said Milagros trying to soften the shock.

“And you, Mamma, what do you think? Is it true?” asked MarÍa with great anxiety.

These two women were not malicious; their state of mind—analogous to that state of the body which is known to physicians as cachexy—was the result of a lack of sound principle from moral impoverishment, a disease caused by the life they led and the constant infection of an atmosphere full of deceptions and scandal. Still, there was something in them that made them revolt at their own cruelty; horrified at the depth and bitterness of the cup they had put to MarÍa’s lips, they now attempted to qualify it.

“No, I believe it is a fable.”

“No, I believe....” But Pilar, who was less generous than her friend, did not finish her sentence.

“The idea arose,” she added, “from a certain likeness....”

“In Monina?”

“To Leon—I do not know what to think. It seems to me beyond a doubt that the connection is of old standing.”

MarÍa bounced from her chair; there is no other word for that spring, like a stag’s when wounded in his sleep, and she rushed to seize the black merino gown in order to start at once.

“Do not be precipitate, do not be rash,” said her mother, detaining her. “You cannot go at this time of day. It is quite dusk.”

“What does that matter?”

“No, you really must not.”

The evening had in fact come down on them and the room was almost dark. “Lights—bring lights!” cried MarÍa, “I cannot bear this gloom.”

“I think that you ought to go,” her mother went on; “but not to-night, to-morrow.”

“Marquesa, have you fully considered the step?” asked her friend. “Will it not be a humiliation; would not silent contempt be more dignified?”

“Oh!” said the affectionate and anxious mother; “I even hope for a reconciliation.”

In truth her hopes were small, but it was what she most ardently desired.

“A reconciliation! what madness! And you, MarÍa, do you believe in a reconciliation?”

“I, I do not know, I cannot tell,” said MarÍa, helpless to answer that or any other question. “I do not ask for reconciliation but for punishment.”

“Oh! my dear, we are not acting a melodrama,” cried the marquesa spreading out her hands with the affected solemnity of a white-robed priest on the opera stage. “Peace, peace! be calm MarÍa; yes you must go, and go dressed like other folks. That smell of dyed woolen ... pah! it is intolerable.”

The two marquesas laughed at the jest, while Pilar threw the objectionable garment aside. MarÍa glanced at it revengefully as much as to say: “Why are you not silk, and well made, and fashionable?”

For the first time since she had renounced worldly things the plain uniform of sanctity, which yesterday she would not have exchanged for royal robes, struck her as ugly.

“The question of dress will be easily solved,” said Pilar, “you and I are much alike in figure; I will bring some of my gowns for you to choose from.”

“And a mantle?”

“Yes, and a hat.”

“At what time will you start?”

“At once.”

“No, to-morrow at noon,” said the mother, “we must not neglect the proprieties—the proper time and opportunity.”

“I must go home to dinner, and I will return afterwards,” said Pilar. “I will bring you what I have that is most suitable, for you to choose from. We will make you quite beautiful. The worst thing that could happen would be for Pepa FÚcar to laugh at you for fun. I shall be back again in an hour and a half; we have no one coming to see us this evening, and my husband is dining out with Higadillos and some other bull-fighters, and a couple of deputies. Au revoir, my dear—good-night, Milagros.” She kissed them both and disappeared.

During her absence the marquesa ate a little dinner; MarÍa none, though there was no fast enjoined by the church almanac. Pilar by-and-bye returned with a carriage-load of elegant raiment—beautiful dresses, mantles, parasols, hats; and that nothing might be wanting she even brought boots of the latest make and silk stockings haute nouveautÉ. This was the sack-cloth worn by this coquettish votary of the faith!

The servants and the maid brought everything up and the sofas and chairs were covered. Pilar, who was a capital show-woman told them to place this gown here, and that hat there, so as to display them to the best advantage. MarÍa sat gazing seriously enough at the gay colours, the wonderful shapes and whimsical decorations devised by French milliners. She looked, but she did not seem to see.

“Well what do you think? Which dress will you wear?”

“This is pretty,” said MarÍa pointing at one at random. “Who made it for you?” And then again she sat gloomily staring before her. She was like a reveller who has been long absent and is astonished to find the fashions changed.

“What a tight shape!” she said.

“This pearl-grey will suit you.”

“No, I would rather wear black,” she said.

“That black corded silk with pale straw colour. That suits you to perfection; I admire your taste though the season is not far advanced it is hot. Which hat will you have?”

MarÍa looked at three hats that Pilar displayed. After long meditation she said: “That black one with—what do you call that colour—cream? and the bird is pretty too with those pale roses.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Pilar admiringly, “if you had not given up the world for more than a single day you could not do better. How well you have chosen. Very well, now you shall try them on. We must see if the gown fits you; it can be taken in, or let out; I brought my maid, and between us ...”

Before MarÍa could say a word her mother, Pilar, and the maid had begun to divest her of the coarse grey flannel dress which looked like the gown of some poverty-stricken priestling. But at this proceeding MarÍa felt a slight reaction.

“Mercy!” she cried, “what are you doing?”

“Silly, silly child,” said the marquesa, “even at such a crisis can you not forget the follies of your exaggerated devotion?”

MarÍa allowed herself to be led into the next room and in front of a looking-glass; but the mirror was covered with a black curtain and looked more like a catafalque. They pulled it aside, and in the glass was born, as one might say, the charming image of MarÍa Sudre—a sudden creation as it seemed in her eyes.

“Good Heavens!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands, “how thin I am!”

“Yes a little fallen away, but prettier, much prettier than ever,” said her mother enthusiastically.

“Lovely, charmante!... Juana, come and dress this hair,” said Pilar to the maid, who was famous as a hair-dresser.

“Be clever now; something simple. Just a knot that we may judge of the effect of the hat.”

Juana quickly unfastened MarÍa’s plaits to begin her work, while MarÍa, after looking at herself for a few minutes, fixed her eyes on her lap and seemed to be praying in silence. She had seen her marble shoulders and snowy throat and the sight had filled her with conscientious alarms. Perhaps the reaction might have spurred her to resistance. If an arrow shot from her mother’s well-aimed bow had not diverted her thoughts.

“When I look at you, my darling, it is incredible to me how that red-haired Pepa FÚcar....”

MarÍa’s jealousy started her into life again as a jaded horse is roused by the spur. Her eyes flashed as they saw themselves in the glass. “How lovely God has made us!” they seemed to say. She turned her head from side to side, looking out of the corner of her eye to see as much as she could of her profile. Yes, it was a fair vision! her paleness was becoming; she might have been taken for a convalescent love-sick angel.

In no time at all Juana had dressed her hair high, so perfectly becoming to MarÍa’s face and shape that the most famous coiffeur could have done no better; it was hailed with an exclamation of surprise, and MarÍa herself gazed in admiration, though she could not smile. Then, having induced her to return to the room where stood a large pier glass, they dressed her in a long princess gown, not an easy operation now that her hair was done.

“Oh! how handsome she is! odious creature,” cried the owner of the garment with a pinch of envy. “Now the mantle; we will try this cashmere wrap with embroidery and a fringe. It was made by a disciple of Worth’s.”

MarÍa obeyed blindly, allowing herself to be dressed, watching the process in the glass with anxious eyes, and involuntarily giving herself the moods and attitudes which were needed. The maid held up the light to show the charming picture.

“Now for the hat!”

This was the finishing touch, and Pilar would trust no hands but her own with the delicate task. It was like crowning a queen. She lifted the hat and placed it carefully on her friend’s head. What a result! what a success! what a triumph of the Æsthetic arts! MarÍa was dressed. Complete and perfect in fashion and style! A fashion plate of flesh! Indeed, as she stood, she seemed the ideal and type of good taste; of that perfection of dress combined with the perfection of beauty which produce those distracting charms to which the prudence, the dignity, and sometimes the wealth and salvation of men are sacrificed. Alas! poor Adam! to think that there was a time when for full-dress you had only to pluck a leaf from the first fig-tree!

“Now I am going,” said Pilar. “I have seen the effect; to-morrow I will come back and dress you myself. I leave you everything complete: shoes, stockings—look what pretty ones—take the blue pair. Will my shoes fit you? I think so. Here are a pair of high boots and a pair of shoes.... I have even brought you gloves, for, if I am not mistaken, you have none.—Good-bye till to-morrow.”

She kissed her noisily and whispered in her ear: “To-morrow will be a day of trial for you. I will order tapers to be lighted before the Holy Picture in San Prudencio—but the Lord will uphold you, poor dear saint and martyr! By the way, my dear, the ceremony at San Lucas’ to-day had all that aspect—that veneer, so to speak—of vulgar display that sticks to everything that AntoÑita de RosafrÍa takes in hand. You should have seen the hangings and the flags! It was like a political demonstration. If they had struck up Riego’s hymn, I should not have been astonished. And, oh, my dear, what a sermon! You should hear that man’s squeaky voice! As for edification!—Well, I must not stay any longer; it is growing late. Good-bye. But one thing strikes me: shall I have tapers lighted before Our Lady of Sorrows?”

“Yes,” said MarÍa eagerly, “Our lady of Sorrows.”

“Good-bye Milagros; to-night I have my place at the opera; I shall be in time for two acts of The Huguenots.... To-morrow then, at noon.”

“At noon, and bring Juana—I will bring my dressing-case, for in this house there is not even a powder puff.”

“Good-night—good-night.”