The man who knew the business to the bottom was Cupido, the barber, who had dispatched the trunks and cases for her.  He knew where the dangerous woman was bound, and he kept it so secret that everybody found it out before the train started.  She was going back to Italy!  He himself had checked and labelled the baggage to the Customs’ House at the frontier—­cases as big as a house, man!  Trunks he could have lain down comfortable in, with his two “Chinamen” to boot!  And the women, as they listened to his tale, applauded the departure with undissimulated pleasure.  They had been liberated from a great danger.  Joy go with her!

Rafael kept quite to himself.  He was vexed at the curiosity of people, at the scoffing sympathy of his friends who condoled with him that his happiness was ending.  For two days he remained indoors, followed by his mother’s inquiring glances.  Dona Bernarda felt more at ease now that the evil influence of the “chorus girl” promised to be over; but none the less she did not lose her frown.  With a woman’s instinct, she still scented the presence of danger.

The young man could hardly wait for the time to come.  It seemed unbearable for him to be there at home while “she” was away off somewhere, alone, shut up in a hotel, waiting just as impatiently as he was for the moment of reunion.

What a sunrise it had been that day when he set out!  Rafael burned with shame as he crept like a burglar in his stockings and on tip-toe, through the room where his mother received the orchard-folk and adjusted all accounts pertaining to the tilling of the land.  He groped his way along guided by the light that came in through the chinks in the closed windows.  His mother was sleeping in a room close by; he could hear her breathe—­the labored respiration of a deep sleep that spelled recovery from the insomnia of the days of his love trysts.  He could still feel the criminal shudder that rippled through him at a slight rattle of the keys, which had been left with the confidence of unlimited authority in the lock of an old chest where dona Bernarda kept her savings.  With tremulous hands he had collected all the money she had put away in the small boxes there.  A thief, a thief!  But, after all, he was taking only what belonged to him.  He had never asked for his share of his father’s estate.  Leonora was rich.  With admirable delicacy she had refused to talk of money during their preparations for the journey; but he would refuse to live on her!  He did not care to be like Salvatti, who had exploited the singer in her youth!  That thought it had been which gave him strength to take the money finally and steal out of the house.  But even on the train he felt uneasy; and su senoria, the deputy, shivered with an instinctive thrill of fear, every time a tricorne of the Civil Guard appeared at a railroad station.  What would his mother say when she got up and found the money gone?