Read "Dragon's Teeth" by Eça de Queirós online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
WHEN Jorge reached home at eleven o'clock he found Luiza up, waiting for him, with a book in her hand.
She asked him how the counsellor's dinner had passed off.
"Excellently," replied Jorge. "A great deal of wine was drunk, toasts were proposed -- " And suddenly interrupting himself, "By the bye, what took you every day to the Arroios? " he said.
Luiza passed her hands over her face to conceal her confusion, and then repeated, her voice trembling slightly, --
"To the Arroios?"
"Yes; Savedra, one of the counsellor's guests this evening, told me he saw you going there every day, on foot or driving."
"Ah," said Luiza, with a little cough, "I went to see the wife of Guedes, a girl who used to go to school with me, and who had recently arrived from Oporto, -- Silva Guedes."
"Silva Guedes," repeated Jorge, thoughtfully; "I thought Guedes was at Cape Verde, as secretary-general."
"I don't know. They came here for a month last summer and stopped at the Arroios; she was sick, poor thing; I went to see her occasionally. Take that light away; it hurts my eyes."
She complained of having felt unwell all the afternoon. She felt weak and feverish.
On the succeeding days she was no better. She complained vaguely of a heavy feeling in her head, of _malaise_. One day she was unable to rise, and Jorge, filled with uneasiness, stayed with her, proposing to send at once for Julião; but Luiza insisted that it was nothing, -- a little debility, at the most.
This was the opinion Juliana expressed to Joanna in the kitchen, --
"The senhora has grown thin; there is some chest-trouble there," she said, with an important air.
Joanna, bending over the fire, replied, --
"As for the mistress, she is a saint!"
Juliana cast a spiteful glance at her, and said with a little smile, --
"The Senhora Joanna says that as if other people were nothing but the dirt under one's feet."
"What other people?"
"I, and you, and every one."
Joanna answered without looking around, while she went on moving the pots on the fire, --