Dona Perfecta turned scarlet.  But the flush of offended pride passed away quickly, leaving her face of a greenish pallor.  Her lips trembled.  Throwing down the knife and fork with which she had been eating, she rose swiftly to her feet.  Her nephew rose also.

“My God!  Holy Virgin of Succor!” she cried, raising both her hands to her head and pressing it between them with the gesture indicative of desperation, “is it possible that I deserve such atrocious insults?  Pepe, my son, is it you who speak to me in this way?  If I have done what you say, I am indeed very wicked.”

She sank on the sofa and covered her face with her hands.  Pepe, approaching her slowly, saw that his aunt was sobbing bitterly and shedding abundant tears.  In spite of his conviction he could not altogether conquer the feeling of compassion which took possession of him; and while he condemned himself for his cowardice he felt something of remorse for the severity and the frankness with which he had spoken.

“My dear aunt,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder, “if you answer me with tears and sighs, you will not convince me.  Proofs, not emotions, are what I require.  Speak to me, tell me that I am mistaken in thinking what I think; then prove it to me, and I will acknowledge my error.”

“Leave me, you are not my brother’s son!  If you were, you would not insult me as you have insulted me.  So, then, I am an intriguer, an actress, a hypocritical harpy, a domestic plotter?”

As she spoke, Dona Perfecta uncovered her face and looked at her nephew with a martyr-like expression.  Pepe was perplexed.  The tears as well as the gentle voice of his father’s sister could not be insignificant phenomena for the mathematician’s soul.  Words crowded to his lips to ask her pardon.  A man of great firmness generally, any appeal to his emotions, any thing which touched his heart, converted him at once into a child.  Weaknesses of a mathematician!  It is said that Newton was the same.

“I will give you the proofs you ask,” said Dona Perfecta, motioning him to a seat beside her.  “I will give you satisfaction.  You shall see whether I am kind, whether I am indulgent, whether I am humble.  Do you think that I am going to contradict you; to deny absolutely the acts of which you have accused me?  Well, then, no; I do not deny them.”

The engineer was astounded.

“I do not deny them,” continued Dona Perfecta.  “What I deny is the evil intention which you attribute to them.  By what right do you undertake to judge of what you know only from appearances and by conjecture?  Have you the supreme intelligence which is necessary to judge justly the actions of others and pronounce sentence upon them?  Are you God, to know the intentions?”

Pepe was every moment more amazed.

“Is it not allowable at times to employ indirect means to attain a good and honorable end?  By what right do you judge actions of mine that you do not clearly understand?  I, my dear nephew, manifesting a sincerity which you do not deserve, confess to you that I have indeed employed subterfuges to attain a good end, to attain what was at the same time beneficial to you and to my daughter.  You do not comprehend?  You look bewildered.  Ah! your great mathematician’s and German philosopher’s intellect is not capable of comprehending these artifices of a prudent mother.”