All of Augusta’s graces were there in Adelaide, but in embryonic form. You could tell that, by the time Adelaide was twenty, she would rival Augusta; meanwhile, she still retained certain childish qualities that somewhat masked those natural gifts.

And yet a man could easily have fallen in love with her, especially if he was a poet with a liking for fifteen-year-old virgins, perhaps because she was rather pale, and poets down the ages have always had a weakness for pale women.

Augusta dressed with supreme elegance, and while she did spend a lot of money on clothes, she made the most of those enormous expenditures, if one could describe it as “making the most” of them. To be fair, though, Augusta never haggled, she always paid the asking price for everything. She was proud of this, and felt that to behave otherwise was ridiculous and low-class.

In this, Augusta both shared the sentiments and served the interests of certain traders, who agreed that it would be dishonorable to beat them down on the price of their merchandise.

Whenever they spoke of this, Augusta’s draper would tell her:

“Asking one price and then selling the product for a lower price is tantamount to confessing that you intended to swindle your customer.”

The draper preferred to do so without confessing to anything.

And again to be fair to Augusta, we must acknowledge that she spared no expense in ensuring that Adelaide was always dressed as elegantly as she herself was.

And this was no small task.

From the age of five, Adelaide had been brought up in the country by some of Augusta’s relatives, who were more interested in growing coffee than in spending money on clothes, and Adelaide grew up with those habits and those ideas. This is why arriving in Rio to rejoin her family proved to be a real transformation. She passed from one civilization to another; she lived through several years in the space of one hour. Fortunately for her, she had an excellent teacher in her mother. Adelaide changed, and on the day this story begins, she was already quite different, although still a long way behind her mother.

As Augusta was answering her daughter’s curious question about what Vasconcelos actually did at night, a carriage drew up at the front door.

Adelaide ran to the window.

“It’s Dona Carlota, Mama,” she said.

A few minutes later, Dona Carlota entered the room. To introduce readers to this new character, I need say only that she was like a volume two of Augusta: beautiful, like her; elegant, like her; vain, like her, which is to say that they were the very best of enemies.

Carlota had come to ask Augusta to sing at a concert she was planning to give at home, a concert dreamed up purely as an opportunity to show off her magnificent new dress.

Augusta gladly accepted.

“How’s your husband?” she asked Carlota.