Breakfast passed without incident. José Lemos preferred not to talk while he was eating; Rodrigo recounted the plot of the play he had seen the previous night at the Ginásio; and that was the sole topic of conversation. When breakfast was over, Rodrigo got up to smoke a cigarette, and José Lemos leaned his elbows on the table, peered out at the rather ominous sky over toward Tijuca, and asked if it looked as if rain were likely.

Antonico was just about to leave the table, having first asked permission, when his mother issued this warning:

“Now, Antonico, at supper, I don’t want you to do what you always do when there are strangers here.”

“What’s that?” asked José Lemos.

“He gets all embarrassed and sticks his finger up his nose. Only silly boys do that, and I don’t like it.”

Deeply humiliated, Antonico ran into the parlor in floods of tears, Dona Beatriz hurried after her youngest child to comfort him, and everyone else left the table.

José Lemos checked with his wife that no one had been omitted from the guest list, and, having established that everyone who should have been invited was there, he prepared to go out. He was immediately given various errands: to ask the hairdresser to come early, to buy gloves for his wife and his daughters, to make sure the carriages were ready, to order ice cream and wines, and certain other tasks in which he could have been helped by young Rodrigo, had that namesake of El Cid not gone upstairs to sleep off breakfast.

No sooner had the soles of José Lemos’s shoes touched the cobbled street outside than Dona Beatriz instructed her daughter Carlota to follow her into the parlor, where she immediately addressed her as follows:

“Today, my dear, your life as a single woman will end, and tomorrow, married life will begin. Having undergone the same transformation myself, I know from personal experience that being married brings with it many heavy responsibilities. Obviously, every woman must learn for herself, but I am following the example of your grandmother, who, on the eve of my marriage to your father, set out in clear and simple language what it means to be married and the great responsibility involved in this new role . . .”

Dona Beatriz stopped speaking, and Carlota, attributing her mother’s silence to a desire for some response, said nothing, but planted a fond, filial kiss on her mother’s cheek.

Had Luís Duarte’s bride peered through the keyhole of her father’s study only three days before, she would have realized that Dona Beatriz was reciting a speech composed by José Lemos, and that her silence was merely a temporary memory lapse.