Dona Bernarda’s ambitious dreams were on the point of realization, and she could not give herself a moment’s rest.  Her son’s cool indifference was something she could not understand for the life of her!  The District was his all right, but was that a reason for falling asleep on the job?  Who could tell what the “enemies of law and order”—­there was more than one of them in the city—­might spring at the very last moment?  No, he must wake up—­go and make a speech—­now at this town, now at that—­and say a few words of encouragement to the people of property, especially.  And why not visit the alcalde, down in X—–­, just to show that poor devil he was being taken seriously.  Rafael must show himself in public, keep everybody talking about him and thinking about him!

And Rafael obeyed, but taking good care to avoid the company of don Andres on such trips, in order to spend a few hours at the Blue House on the way out or back, or else, to cut his engagement altogether and pass the day with Leonora, trembling to return home lest his mother should have learned what he had been up to.

Dona Bernarda, in fact, had not been slow in detecting her son’s new friendship.  To begin with, her one concern in life was Rafael’s health and conduct.  And in that gossipy inquisitive country-town, her son could do virtually nothing which she did not know all about in the course of a few hours.  An indiscreet remark of Cupido had even brought her to the bottom of that mysterious and perilous night trip down the flooded river—­not to rescue a “poor family,” but to call on that comica—­that “chorus girl”—­as dona Bernarda called Leonora in a furious burst of scorn.  Stormy scenes occurred that were to leave a strong undercurrent of bitterness and fear in Rafael’s character.  Dona Bernarda’s harshness of disposition broke the young man’s spirit, making him realize with what good reason he had always feared his mother.  That uncompromising pietist, with her armorplate of impeccable virtue and “sound principles” about her, crushed him flat with her very first words.  What in the world was he thinking of?  Was he bound to dishonor the name of Brull?  Now after so many, many years of family sacrifice, was he going to make a fool of himself, and give his enemies a hold on him, just because of the first ballet-skirt that came along?  And in her rage she did not hesitate to rend the veil of reticence behind which her conjugal fury and her conjugal unhappiness had run their parallel courses.

“The same as your father!” dona Bernarda exclaimed.  “There’s no escaping blood:  a woman-chaser, a friend of low-lives, ready to drive me out of house and home for the sake of any one of them ... and I, big fool that I am, work for men like that!  Forgetting the salvation of my soul in the next world to see you get farther along in this than your father did!...  And how do you repay me?  Just as he did; with one disappointment, one irritation, after another!”