apparent around the mother and daughter the gap of
somewhat disdainful affection, in which commiseration bore no small
part. They were poor. The father had been a diplomat of some distinction
who, at his death, left his wife no other source of income than the
widow's pension. Two sons were abroad as attaches of an embassy,
struggling with the scantiness of their salary and the demands of their
position. The mother and daughter lived in Madrid, chained to the
society in which they were born, fearing to abandon it, as if that would
be equivalent to a degradation, remaining during the day in a
fourth-floor apartment, furnished with the remnants of their past
opulence, making unheard-of sacrifices in order to be able in the
evening to rub elbows worthily with those who had been their equals.

Some relative of Dona Emilia, the mother, contributed to her support,
not with money (never that!) but by loaning her the surplus of their
luxury, that she and her daughter might maintain a pale appearance of
comfort.

Some of them loaned them their carriage on certain days, so that they
might drive through the Castellana and the Retiro, bowing to their
friends as the carriages passed; others sent them their box at the Opera
on evenings when the bill was not a brilliant one. Their pity made them
remember them, too, when they sent out invitations to birthday dinners,
afternoon teas, and the like. "We mustn't forget the Torrealtas, poor
things." And the next day, the society reporters included in the list of
those present at the function "the charming Senorita de Torrealta and
her distinguished mother, the widow of the famous diplomat of
imperishable memory," and Dona Emilia, forgetting her situation,
fancying she was in the good old times, went to everything, in the same
black gown, annoying with her "my dears" and her gossip the great ladies
whose maids were richer and ate better than she and her daughter. If
some old gentleman took refuge beside her, the diplomat's wife tried to
overwhelm him with the majesty of her recollections. "When we were
ambassadors in Stockholm." "When my friend Eugenie was empress...."

The daughter, endowed with her instinctive girlish timidity, seemed
better to realize her position. She would remain seated among the older
ladies, only rarely venturing to join the other girls who had been her
boarding-school companions and who now treated her condescendingly,
looking on her as they would upon a governess w