Julita often visited her brother and sister, but her presence was not as
pleasant for them as it used to be. The young girl's character had
notably changed during the last few weeks; she rarely gave way to that
hearty and contagious laugh which used to fascinate all who heard it;
nor did her conversation any longer sparkle with the piquante and ready
wit which formerly entranced every one. She had grown more reserved and
thoughtful; the smile that from time to time hovered over her lips was
melancholy; she had become irritable and peevish; in the course of a few
days she had three quarrels with her brother on the most trifling
subjects: such a thing in days gone by had rarely happened.
"What a pity, Julita!" exclaimed Miguel at the close of one of them.
"You are following in mamma's footsteps."
Her physical appearance had also undergone some change, and not for the
better; the roses of her cheeks had paled a little; there were blue
circles under her eyes; and though this made them more lustrous, it took
away in large measure that sweet and picturesque expression that was
characteristic of them.
Miguel and Maximina noticed these things, and had many times commented
on them with sorrow; but there was one thing that attracted their
attention above all and was the subject of long discussion between them:
this was the invincible antipathy which Julia showed to her cousin Don
Alfonso, and the eagerness with which she tried to bring him into the
conversation, so as to blacken his character.
There seemed to be no defect which the Andalusian gentleman did not
possess in his cousin's eyes, and she took a malicious delight in
enumerating and exaggerating them. In this respect, she every day made
some new discovery which she was sure to bring to her brother and
sister.
At one time it was that he had brought a great lot of neckties, which to
her mind proved that he squandered his money; then, again, she made all
manner of ridicule of him, on account of the perfect battery of perfumes
which he had on his toilet table; at times she called him lazy, because
he never opened a book; at others, she ridiculed him for curling his
mustache with the tongs; then she would complain of him because he would
not take her to walk. But what made her most indignant and beside
herself was his habit of not going to bed till two or three or even four
o'clock in the morning, and because two or three times he had not done
so till daylight.
"What does this man do after he leaves the theatre? Where does he go?
The best way would be not to think about it. He is every way disgusting,
repugnant!"
"It is too bad!" Miguel rejoined. "But there is no reason for you to be
so exercised about it. Mamma invited him to spend a while at her house.
When she does not receive him any longer, it will be all over."
Julia made no reply to this; but the next day she was again going
assiduously out of her way to get her cousin "on the carpet," or, more
accurately speaking, in the pillory.
"Do you know it seems to me that Julia is in love with Alfonso?" said
Maximina to her husband, one night as they were going to bed.
"It seems to me so too," replied Miguel, with a deep frown; "and I am
sorry for it, because Saavedra is a heartless, bad man, who would not
marry her, and if he did marry her, would make her wretched.... And the
worst of it is," he added after a pause, "mamma is as much in love with
him as she is! Yesterday I tried to give her a hint about the
impropriety of keeping him so long at her house, and she gave me one of
her violent, impertinent replies, so that I have no more desire to touch
on that subject, and yet I feel that it is very necessary."