One afternoon Pilar, returning from the clubhouse, found Lucía more pensive than usual.
“Silly child,” she said, “of what are you thinking? If you were to go to the Casino it would amuse you greatly.”
“Pilarcita,” murmured Lucía, throwing her arms around the neck of her friend, “will you keep a secret for me if I tell you one?”
“Of course I will! open your heart to me, child. In confidence, is it not so? You may tell me anything. I have seen so many things--there is nothing that could surprise me.”
“Listen,” said Lucía, “I want to know, at all costs, how Don Ignacio Artegui’s mother is.”
Pilar drew back, disappointed; then laughing, with her cynical laugh, she cried:
“Is that all? A great secret that! What a big handful three flies make.”
“For Heaven’s sake!” entreated Lucía uneasily, “don’t give a hint of this to any one. I am dying to know, but if any one should hear--Miranda or----”
“Simpleton! I shall soon learn what you wish to know, and without any one hearing anything about it. I have a hundred ways of finding out. I promise you your curiosity shall be gratified.”
Pilar tapped Lucía, who looked serious and a little confused, two or three times on the cheek.
“Are we going to take a walk to-day, madam nurse?” she asked.
“Yes, and you shall drink some milk in Vesse. But put on a warmer dress, for Heaven’s sake; you are so careless, you are quite capable of exposing yourself to taking a cold. Have you not observed how fragrant the roses are? In Leon there are hardly any roses; I remember that I used to place all I could find before the image of the Virgin, which I have there in my room.”
The Casino was for Perico and Miranda, as for all the other idlers of the colony, house and home during the time they spent at the springs. The great edifice, taken as a whole, might be likened to a concert of voices, inviting to the enjoyment of the rapid and easy life of our age. The spacious peristyle, the principal façade with its broad roof, its private garden where exotic plants grow in graceful baskets, and its rich and fanciful ornamentation of dazzling whiteness; the tall columns of burnished porphyry that support the interior portion of the building; its luxurious arm-chairs and broad divans; the mischievous cupids (artistic symbol of the ephemeral passions that last during a two weeks’ course of the waters), that run around the cornice of the large ball-room or hover on the blue background of the broad panels of the theater; the profusion of gold, artistically disposed in touches, like points of light, or in long stripes, like sunbeams; the large window--everything, in short, contributes to give one the idea of an Athenian temple, improved and enriched with the benefits and pleasures of modern civilization. A glance at the southern façade of the Casino discovers at once the _numen_ to whom worship and sacrifice are here paid, the nymph of the waters, gracefully inclining her urn, while from some rushes at her feet emerge two cupids, one of them supporting a shell, which receives in its hollow the sacred water that flows in a copious stream from the urn. The priests and flamens of the temple of the nymphs are the waiters of the Casino who, at a sign, a movement of the lips, hasten, swiftly and silently, to bring the desired article--cigars, newspapers, writing-materials, refreshments, even the waters, which they carry at a run, in a little tank, turned mouth downward over a plate, so that they may not lose their temperature or the gases which give them their value.