"See, listen. Those verses are beautiful and deserve to be printed in letters of gold. It just happens, child, that I received some money a few days ago from Orense. Do you know what I was thinking of the other night while you were asleep in the little bed I arranged for you? That it would be better for you to go yourself to publish them--yonder--to Madrid."
To her great surprise she saw that Segundo's face clouded. To go to Madrid now! Impossible; he must first learn something of Nieves. The last tragic scene of his love affair, the dénouement of her sudden widowhood, raised between them a barrier difficult to pass. Nieves was rich, and if Segundo should go to her now and throw himself at her feet, he would not be the lover asking her to requite his love, but the suitor to her hand, alleging anterior rights and basing on them his aspirations to replace her defunct husband. And Segundo, who had accepted money from Leocadia, felt his pride rebel at the thought that Nieves might take him for a fortune-hunter, or might scorn him for his obscurity and his poverty. But did not Nieves love him? Had she not told him so? Why, then, did she not send him some message. True, he had made no attempt to communicate with the beautiful widow, or to refresh her memory. He feared to do it awkwardly, inopportunely, and so reopen the wound caused by the death of her husband.
The volume of verses--an excellent idea! The volume of verses was the one means of recovering his place in Nieves' recollection worthily, borne on the wings of popular applause. If this volume were read, admired, praised, it would win fame for its author; the difference between his own and Nieves' social position, which might now make his pretensions appear ridiculous, would disappear. "To marry!" said Segundo to himself. Marriage seemed to him a secondary matter. Let Nieves only love him. It was love he asked, not marriage. Sitting at Leocadia's very table he wrote to Blanquez, giving him instructions, and prepared the manuscript to post it, and made out the index and the title-page with the impatient joy of one who, expecting to win a fortune, buys a ticket in the lottery. When he was gone Leocadia remained sunk in thought. Segundo had no desire to go to Madrid. Then the gleam of happiness that flashed across her mind at the thought that Segundo should establish himself in Vilamorta was quenched by two considerations--one was that Segundo would die of tedium here; the other that she could not long continue to supply his wants. In mortgaging the house she had burned her last cartridge. What should she mortgage now--herself? And she smiled sadly. In the hall resounded the steps of the neglected little cripple, on his way to bed, where Flores would soon lull him to sleep with her solecisms and barbarous litanies. The mother sighed. And this being, this being who had no support but her--what should he live on? When ruin had overtaken her, and she could no longer give him food or shelter, what a mute and continual reproach would the presence of the unhappy child be to her! And how could she set him to work?