A Daughter of the Vine by Gertrude Atherton

Thorpe dressed for dinner, pocketed a roll of the gold with a wry face, and went to the _sala_, a long room opening on the middle corridor. Prudencia, in a red-satin gown, so thick that it stood out about her as if hooped, and flashing jewels on a great deal of white skin, her hair piled high and surmounted with a diamond comb, sat in the middle of the room talking volubly to her sister-in-law, who stood by the mantel looking sadly about her. Chonita had lost little of her beauty. She had had but two children; and vanity had kept the lines of her figure, the gliding grace of her walk, unchanged. She had known, during the twenty years of her married life, the great joys and the great disappointments, the exaltation and the terrified recognition of mortal weakness and limitations, inseparable to two such natures. But, on the whole, she was happy, and she and her husband were very nearly one.

"No, no, my Chonita! " Prudencia was exclaiming in her own tongue. "Why shouldst thou be sad? It is nearly twenty years; one cannot remember so long. Thou hast thine own house, far more elegant than this, I am told: why shouldst thou feel sad to come back? Thou art wealthy, and hast a devoted husband, -- _ay de mi_, my Reinaldo! (but I could have had others), -- and art as beautiful as ever, although I do not agree with some that thou hast not grown a day older. Thou hast the expression of years, if not its lines and grey hairs. I need not have grown stout; but I have no vanity, and walking is such trouble, and I love _dulces_. Besides, we do not carry our flesh into the next world; so Reinaldo, who hated fat women -- Ay, Senor Torp, pardon me, no? I not did see you. I wish mooch to present you to my sister-in-law -- Dona Chonita Iturbi y Moncada de Estenega, Senor Torp of Eengland, _mijita_."