Remedios, with her head bowed low over her embroidery, would blush deep red whenever Rafael praised her work or told her she was the prettiest girl in all Alcira.  He would help her thread her needles, and hold his hands out to make a winding frame for the skeins; and more than once, with the familiarity of an old playmate, he would pinch her mischievously through the embroidery hoop.  And she would never miss the chance to scream scandal.

“Rafael, don’t be crazy,” his mother would say, threatening him indulgently with her withered forefinger.  “Let Remedios work; if you carry on so I won’t let you come into the parlor.”

And at night, alone in the dining-room with don Andres, when the hour of confidences came, dona Bernarda would forget the affairs of “the House” and of “the Party,” to say with satisfaction: 

“It’s going better.”

“Is Rafael taking to her?”

“More and more every day.  We’re getting there, we’re getting there!  That boy is the living image of his father when it comes to matters like this.  Believe me, you can’t let one of that tribe out of your sight a minute.  If I didn’t keep my eye peeled, that young devil would be doing something that would discredit the House forever.”

And the good woman was sure that Doctor Moreno’s daughter—­that abominable creature whose good looks had been her nightmare for some months past—­no longer existed for Rafael.

She knew, from her spies, that on one market morning the two had met on the street in town.  Rafael had looked the other way, as if trying to avoid her; the “comica” had turned pale and walked straight ahead pretending not to see him.  What did that mean?...  A break for good of course!  The impudent hussy was livid with rage, you see, perhaps because she could not trap her Rafael again; for he, weary of such uncleanliness, had abandoned her forever.  Ah, the lost soul, the indecent gad-about!  Excuse me!  Was a woman to educate a son in the soundest and most virtuous principles, make a somebody of him, and then have an adventuress come along, a thousand times worse than a common street-woman, and carry him off, as nice as you please, in her filthy hands?  What had the daughter of that scamp of a doctor thought?...  Let her fume!  “You’re sore just because you see he’s dumped you for good!”

In the joy of her triumph dona Bernarda was thinking anxiously of her son’s marriage to Remedios, and, coming down one peg on the ladder of her dignity toward don Matias, she began to treat the exporter as a member of the family, commenting contentedly upon the growing affection that united their two children.

“Well, if they’re fond of each other,” said the rustic magnate, “the wedding can take place tomorrow so far as I’m concerned.  Remedios means a good deal to me; hard to find a girl like her for running a house; but that needn’t interfere with the marriage.  I’m mighty well satisfied, dona Bernarda, that we should be related through our children.  I’m only sorry that don Ramon isn’t here to see it all.”