"Your friends are waiting for you at the Club. They saw you for a moment
only, this morning; they'll be wanting to hear all your stories about
life in Madrid."

Doña Bernarda fixed upon the young deputy a pair of deep, scrutinizing,
severely maternal eyes that recalled to Rafael all the roguish anxieties
of his childhood.

"Are you going directly to the Club?..." she added. "Andrés will be
starting too, right away."

Rafael, in reply, wished a blunt "good-afternoon" to his mother and don
Andrés, who were still at table sipping their coffee, and strode out of
the dining-room.

Finding himself on the broad, red-marble staircase in the silence of
that ancient mansion, of such princely magnificence, he experienced the
sudden sense of comfort and wellbeing that a traveler feels on plunging
into a bath after a tedious journey.

Ever since he had arrived, with the noisy reception at the station, the
hurrahs, the deafening music, handshakes here, crowding there, the
pushing and elbowing of more than a thousand people who had thronged
the streets of Alcira to get a close look at him, this was the first
moment he had found himself alone, his own master, able to do exactly as
he pleased, without needing to smile automatically in all directions and
welcome with demonstrations of affection persons whose faces he could
scarcely recall.