“What is the meaning of this,” he cried, in a voice of suppressed anger. “You here, and alone,--what are you doing?”
“Nothing! why, have you not just dropped a letter into the letter-box?”
“Why did you lie, then?” exclaimed the husband, in furious accents, his mouth and chin trembling with jealous rage.
“I don’t know what I may have said when you hurt my arm,” answered Lucía, recovering her self-possession. “What is true is that I dropped a letter there just now.”
“And why did you not give it to me to post? Why did you come here yourself--alone?”
Some passers-by turned around to listen to the dialogue carried on in angry tones and in a foreign tongue.
“We are making a scene,” said Miranda. “Come.”
They turned into a solitary street and for the space of a few minutes both maintained an eloquent silence.
“For whom was that letter?” the husband at last asked abruptly.
“For Don Ignacio Artegui,” answered Lucía, in a firm and composed voice.
“I knew it!” said Miranda under his breath, suppressing a malediction.
“He has lost his mother. You yourself heard so to-day.”
“It is highly indecorous, highly ridiculous,” said Miranda, whose voice sounded harsh and broken like the crackling of burning brambles, “for a lady to write in this unceremonious fashion to a man.”
“I am indebted to Señor de Artegui for services and favors,” said Lucía, “which compel me to take a part in his griefs.”
“Those services, if there be such, it is my duty to acknowledge. I would have written to him.”
“Your letter,” objected Lucía simply, “would not have served to console him, while mine would; and as it was not a question of etiquette but of----”
“Hold your tongue,” cried Miranda rudely; “hold your tongue and don’t talk nonsense,” he continued, with that roughness which even men of culture do not hesitate to display when speaking to their wives. “Before marrying you should have learned how to conduct yourself in society, so as not to bring ridicule upon me by committing silly actions, which are in bad taste. But I have no right to complain; what better could I have expected when I married the daughter of a retailer of oil and vinegar!”
Miranda walked with long strides, dragging rather than supporting his wife, and they had now almost reached the _châlet_. At this offensive speech Lucía, with pale cheeks and flashing eyes, freed herself violently from his clasp, and stood still in the middle of the road.