w with some one of those young bloods
that hung around her, attracted by her still fresh, alluring maturity.

But if Concha spoke to him with her easy freedom, telling him of the
sadness she said she felt and allowing herself to confide in him, as if
they were united by a long standing friendship, that was enough to make
the master change his thoughts immediately. She was a superior woman of
ideals, condemned to live in a depressing aristocratic atmosphere. All
the gossip about her was a calumny, a lie forged by envious people. She
ought to be the companion of a superior man, of an artist.

Renovales knew her history; he was proud of the friendly confidence she
had had in him. She was the only daughter of a distinguished gentleman,
a solemn jurist, and a violent Conservative, a minister in the most
reactionary cabinets of the reign of Isabel II. She had been educated at
the same school as Josephina, who in spite of the fact that Concha was
four years her senior, retained a vivid recollection of her lively
companion. "For mischief and deviltry you can't beat Conchita Salazar."
It was thus that Renovales heard her name for the first time. Then when
the artist and his wife had moved from Venice to Madrid, he learned that
she had changed her name to that of the Countess of Alberca by marrying
a man who might have been her father.

He was an old courtier who performed his duties as a grandee of Spain
with great conscientiousness, proud of his slavery to the royal family.
His ambition was to belong to all the honorable orders of Europe and as
soon as he was named to one of them, he had his picture painted, covered
with scarfs and crosses, wearing the uniform of one of the traditional
military Orders. His wife laughed to see him, so little, bald and
solemn, with high boots, a dangling sword, his breast covered with
trinkets, a white plumed helmet resting in his lap.

During the life of isolation and privation with which Renovales
struggled so courageously, the papers brought to the artist's wretched
house the echoes of the triumphs of the "fair Countess of Alberca." Her
name appeared in the first line of every account of an aristocratic
function. Besides, they called her "enlightened," and talked about her
literary culture, her classic education which she owed to her
"illustrious father," now dead. And with this public news there reached
the artist on the whispering wings of Madrid gossip other tales that
represented the Co