“Nobody can tell,” don Andres replied.  “Not even Cupido can find that out.  She’ll stay until she gets bored, he says.  And to be in less danger of that, she has brought her whole establishment along on her back, like a snail.”

“Well, she’ll be bored soon enough,” one of Rafael’s friends observed.  “I suppose she thinks she’s going to be admired and stared at as she was abroad!  Moreno’s girl!  Did you ever hear of such a family?...  Daughter of that descamisado, as my father calls him because he died without a stitch on his back!  And all people say of them!  Last night her arrival was the subject of conversation in every decent home in town, and there wasn’t a man who did not promise to fight shy of her.  If she thinks Alcira is anything like the places where they dance the razzle-dazzle and there’s no shame, she’ll be sadly disappointed.”

Don Andres laughed slyly.

“Yes, boys!  She’ll be disappointed.  There’s a plenty of morality in this town, and much wholesome fear of scandal.  We’re probably as bad as people in other places, but we don’t want anybody to find us out.  I’m afraid this Leonora is going to spend most of her time with her aunt—­a silly old thing, whatever her many virtues may be.  They say she’s brought a French maid along....  But she’s beginning to cry ‘sour grapes’ already.  Do you know what she said to Cupido yesterday?  That she had come here with the idea of living all by herself, just to get away from people; and when the barber spoke to her of society in Alcira, she made a wry face, as much as to say the place was filled with no-accounts.  That’s what the women were talking most about last night.  You can see why!  She has always been the favorite of so many big guns!”

An idea seemed to flit across the wrinkled forehead of don Andres, tracing a wicked smile around his lips: 

“You know what I think, Rafael?  You’re young and you’re handsome, and you’ve been abroad.  Why don’t you make a try for her, if only to prick the bubble of her conceit and show her there are people here, too.  They say she’s mighty good-looking, and, what the deuce!  It wouldn’t be so hard.  When she finds out who you are!...”

The old man said this with the idea of flattering Rafael, certain that the prestige of his “prince” was such that no woman could resist him.  But Rafael had lived through the previous afternoon, and the words seemed very bitter pills.  Don Andres at once grew serious, as if a frightful vision had suddenly passed before his eyes; and he added in a respectful tone: 

“But no:  that was only a jest.  Don’t pay any attention to what I say.  Your mother would be terribly provoked.”

The thought of dona Bernarda, the personification of austere, uncompromising virtue, chased the mirth from every face in the company.

“The strange thing about all this,” said Rafael, who was anxious to turn the conversation in a different direction, “is that now everybody remembers the Doctor’s daughter.  But years and years went by without her name being mentioned, in my hearing at least.”