The Dona Maruja, however, since it was so, felt that the only thing
left to do was to give her the polluted dress, and trust that the
Devil might not fly away with her.

Leaving the perfectly consoled Faquita, Maruja crossed the large
hall, and, opening a small door, entered a dark passage through the
thick adobe wall of the old casa, and apparently left the present
century behind her. A peaceful atmosphere of the past surrounded
her not only in the low vaulted halls terminating in grilles or
barred windows; not only in the square chambers whose dark rich but
scanty furniture was only a foil to the central elegance of the
lace-bordered bed and pillows; but in a certain mysterious odor of
dried and desiccated religious respectability that penetrated
everywhere, and made the grateful twilight redolent of the
generations of forgotten Guitierrez who had quietly exhaled in the
old house. A mist as of incense and flowers that had lost their
first bloom veiled the vista of the long corridor, and made the
staring blue sky, seen through narrow windows and loopholes,
glitter like mirrors let into the walls. The chamber assigned to
the young ladies seemed half oratory and half sleeping-room, with a
strange mingling of the convent in the bare white walls, hung only
with crucifixes and religious emblems, and of the seraglio in the
glimpses of lazy figures, reclining in the deshabille of short
silken saya, low camisa, and dropping slippers. In a broad angle
of the corridor giving upon the patio, its balustrade hung with
brightly colored serapes and shawls, surrounded by voluble
domestics and relations, the mistress of the casa half reclined in
a hammock and gave her noonday audience.

Maruja pushed her way through the clustered stools and cushions to