lady
might use toward her lowest inferiors.

"Go!"

He raised his head and found Leonora looking at him, her eyes ablaze
with anger and offended dignity.

"I'm never taken by force," she said coldly. "I give myself ... if I
feel like it."

And in the gesture of scorn and rage with which she dismissed him,
Rafael thought he caught a trace of loathing at some memory of
Boldini--that repugnant lecher, who had been the only person in the
world to win her by violence.

Rafael tried to stammer an excuse, but that hateful association of the
brutal scene rendered her implacable.

"Go! Go, or I'll beat you again!... And never come back!"

And to emphasize the words, as Rafael, humiliated and covered with dirt,
was leaving the garden, she shut the gate behind him with such a violent
slam that the bars almost went flying.

IV

Dona Bernarda was much pleased with Rafael. The angry glances, the
gestures of impatience, the wordless arguments between mother and son,
which the household had formerly witnessed in such terror, had come to
an end.

The boy had not been visiting the Blue House for some time. She knew
that with absolute certainty, thanks to the gratuitous espionage
conducted for her by persons attached to the Brull family. He scarcely
ever left the house; a few moments at the Club after lunch; and the rest
of the day in the dining-room, with her and family friends; or else,
shut up in his room, with his books, probably, which the austere senora
revered with the superstitious awe of ignorance.

Don Andres, her advisor, commented upon the change with a gloating "I
told you so." What had he always said, when dona Bernarda, in the
confiding intimacies of that friendship which amounted almost to a
senile, a tranquil, a distantly respectful passion, would complain of
Rafael's contrariness? That it would all pass; that it was a young man's
whim; that youth must have its fling! What was the use? Rafael hadn't
studied to be a monk! Many boys his age, and even older ones, were far
worse!... And the old gentleman smiled, for he was thinking of his own
easy conquests with the wretched flock of dirty, unkempt peasant girls
who wrapped the oranges in the shipping houses of Alcira. "You see, dona
Bernarda, you suffered too much with don Ramon. You are a bit too
exacting with Rafael. Let him have a good time! Let him enjoy himself!
He'll get tired of that chorus girl soon enough, pretty as she is. Then
you can take