Then softening somewhat and feeling the need of imparting her great plans for the future, she would pass from anger to friendly confidence, and give Rafael insight into the condition of the family.  He was so busy with Party affairs, and thumbing his big books upstairs, that he did not know how things were going at home.  And he didn’t need to know for that matter:  she was there to take care of that.  But Rafael must realize the gaps that had been opened in their fortune by his father’s wild conduct just before he died.  She was performing miracles of economy.  Thanks to her efficient administration of affairs, and to the loyal aid of don Andres, many debts had already been paid off, and she had redeemed several mortgages.  But the burden was a heavy one and it would still be many years before she could call herself quite free of it.

Besides—­and as dona Bernarda came to this part of her talk she grew tenderer and more insinuating still—­he was now the leading man of the District and so he must be the wealthiest.  Now that wouldn’t be a difficult thing to manage.  All he had to do was, be a good son, and follow the advice of his mama, who loved him more than anything else in the world...  A deputy now, and later on, when he came back from Madrid, marry!  There were plenty of good girls around—­well brought up, educated in the fear of the Lord—­and millionairesses besides—­who would be more than glad to be his wife.

Rafael smiled faintly at this harangue.  He knew whom his mother had in mind—­Remedios, the daughter of the richest man in town—­a rustic, the latter, with more luck than brains, who flooded the English markets with oranges and made enormous profits, circumventing by instinctive shrewdness all the commercial combinations made against him.

That was why Rafael’s mother was always insistently urging her son to visit the house of Remedios, inventing all sorts of pretexts to get him there.  Besides, dona Bernarda invited Remedios to the Brull place frequently, and rarely indeed did Rafael come home of an afternoon without finding that timid maiden there—­a dull, handsomish sort of girl, dressed up in clothes that did cruel injustice to a peasant beauty rapidly transformed, by her father’s good luck, into a young “society” girl.

“But, mama,” said Rafael, smiling.  “I’m not thinking of marriage!...  And when I do, I’ll have to consider my own feelings.”

After that interview a moral gulf had opened between mother and son.  As a child, Rafael had known his mother to frown and sulk after some mischievous prank of his.  But now, her aggressive, menacing, uncommunicative glumness was prolonged for days and days.

On returning home at night he would find himself subjected to a searching cross-examination that would last all during supper.  Don Andres would usually be present, though he did not dare raise his head when that masterful woman spoke.  Where had he been?  Whom had he seen?...  Rafael felt himself surrounded by a system of espionage that followed him wherever he went in the city or in the country.