“No sir, today you were at the chorus-girl’s house again!...  Take care, Rafael!  Mark my word!  You’re killing me, you’re killing me ...!”

And then those absurd clandestine trips to the Blue House began, the leading man of the district, the advocate of Alcira’s fortunes, creeping on his stomach, skulking from bush to bush, in order not to be seen by telltale observers!

Don Andres did his best to console the irate woman.  It was just a passing whim of Rafael’s!  Boys will be boys!  You’ve got to let them have a good time now and then!  What do you expect with a handsome fellow like that and from the best family in the region!  And the cynical old man, accustomed to easy conquests in the suburbs, blinked maliciously, taking it for granted that Rafael had won a complete triumph down at the Blue House.  How else explain the youth’s assiduity in his visits there, and his timid though tenacious rebelliousness against his mother’s authority?

“Such affairs, oh you enjoy them—­what’s the use!  But in the end they weary a fellow, dona Bernarda,” the old man said sententiously.  “She’ll be clearing out some fine day.  Besides, just let Rafael go to Madrid as deputy, and see the society there!  When he comes back he’ll have forgotten this woman ever existed!”

The faithful lieutenant of the Brulls would have been astonished to know how little Rafael was progressing with his suit.

Leonora was not the woman that she had shown herself on the night of the flood.  With the fascination of danger gone, the novelty of the adventure, and the extraordinary circumstances of their second interview, she treated Rafael with a kindly indifference like any other of the adorers who had flocked about her in her day.  She had come to look upon him as a new piece of furniture that she found in place in front of her every afternoon; an automaton, who appeared as regularly as a clock strikes, to spend hours and hours staring at her, pale, shrinking with an absurd consciousness of inferiority, and often answering her questions with stupid phrases that made her laugh.

Her irony and deliberate frankness wounded Rafael cruelly.  “Hello, Rafaelito,” she would say sometimes as he came in.  “You here again?  Better look out!  People will be talking about us before long.  Then what will mama say to you?” And Rafael would be stung to the quick.  What a disgrace, to be tied to a mother’s apron-strings, and have to stoop to all those subterfuges to visit this place without raising a rumpus at home!

But try as he would, meanwhile, he could not shake off the spell that Leonora was exercising over him.