open, and he leaned against the thickness of
the wall. The long folds of the damask curtain, falling straight from
the broad brass cornice, hid him partly from the room. He folded his
arms on his breast, and looked steadily at Antonia's profile.

The people returning from the harbour filled the pavements; the shuffle
of sandals and a low murmur of voices ascended to the window. Now and
then a coach rolled slowly along the disjointed roadway of the Calle de
la Constitucion. There were not many private carriages in Sulaco; at the
most crowded hour on the Alameda they could be counted with one glance
of the eye. The great family arks swayed on high leathern springs, full
of pretty powdered faces in which the eyes looked intensely alive
and black. And first Don Juste Lopez, the President of the Provincial
Assembly, passed with his three lovely daughters, solemn in a black
frock-coat and stiff white tie, as when directing a debate from a high
tribune. Though they all raised their eyes, Antonia did not make the
usual greeting gesture of a fluttered hand, and they affected not to
see the two young people, Costaguaneros with European manners, whose
eccentricities were discussed behind the barred windows of the first
families in Sulaco. And then the widowed Senora Gavilaso de Valdes
rolled by, handsome and dignified, in a great machine in which she used
to travel to and from her country house, surrounded by an armed retinue
in leather suits and big sombreros, with carbines at the bows of their
saddles. She was a woman of most distinguished family, proud, rich, and
kind-hearted. Her second son, Jaime, had just gone off on the Staff of
Barrios. The eldest, a worthless fellow of a moody disposition, filled
Sulaco with the noise of his dissipations, and gambled heavily at the
club. The two youngest boys, with yellow Ribierist cockades in their
caps, sat on the front seat. She, too, affected not to see the Senor
Decoud talking publicly with Antonia in defiance of every convention.
And he not even her novio as far as the world knew! Though, even in that
case, it would have been scandal enough. But the dignified old lady,
respected and admired by the first families, would have been still more
shocked if she could have heard the words they were exchanging.

"Did you say I lost sight of the aim? I have only one aim in the world."

She made an almost imperceptible negative movement of her head, still
staring across the street at the Avel