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Updated: June 5, 2025
It is necessary that nothing be lacking." The two cousins, Sinang and Victoria, were at the other end of the dining-room. They had come to keep company with the sick Maria. Andeng was helping them clean up a tea service in order to serve tea. "Do you know Doctor Espadaña?" asked Maria Clara's foster sister, directing her question to Victoria. "No!" replied the latter.
In the entresol Basilio saw Sinang, as small as when our readers knew her before, although a little rounder and plumper since her marriage. Then to his great surprise he made out, further in at the back of the room, chatting with Capitan Basilio, the curate, and the alferez of the Civil Guard, no less than the jeweler Simoun, as ever with his blue goggles and his nonchalant air.
Simoun bought or exchanged old jewelry, brought there by economical mothers, to whom it was no longer of use. "You, haven't you something to sell?" he asked Cabesang Tales, noticing the latter watching the sales and exchanges with covetous eyes, but the reply was that all his daughter's jewels had been sold, nothing of value remained. "What about Maria Clara's locket?" inquired Sinang.
"No, that also is a secret; but I will tell you alone, if the señores will permit." "Certainly, certainly!" said Father Salví. Sinang took Crisostomo to one end of the hall. She was very happy with the idea of knowing a secret. "Tell me, my little friend," said Ibarra, "Is Maria angry with me?" "I do not know, but she says that it is better that you should forget her and then begins to cry.
"What am I to do?" he said and fled from the house. There in the dining-room Captain Tiago, Linares, and Aunt Isabel were eating supper. In the sala the rattling of plate and tableware was heard. Maria Clara had said that she did not care to eat and had seated herself at the piano. By her side was jolly Sinang, who murmured little secrets in Maria's ear, while Father Salví uneasily paced the sala.
On seeing their joyful faces, with their youthful smiles, their beautiful black hair as it floated in the breeze, and the wide folds of their pretty dresses, you would have taken them for goddesses of the night and would have thought that they were fleeing from day if perchance you had not already known that it was Maria Clara and her four friends: jolly Sinang; her cousin, the serious Victoria; beautiful Iday; and the pensive Neneng, pretty, modest and timid.
"Sinang!" scolded Victoria. "I haven't been able to endure him since he tore up the Wheel of Fortune. I don't go to confession to him any more." Of all the houses one only was to be noticed without lights and with all the windows closed that of the alferez. Maria Clara expressed surprise at this. "The witch! The Muse of the Civil Guard, as the old man says," exclaimed the irrepressible Sinang.
"My, oh my!" he complained as he felt of his smarting arms, "what a distance there is between the Philippines and the banks of the Rhine! O tempora! O mores! Some are given honors and others sanbenitos!" All laughed at this, even the grave Victoria, while Sinang, she of the smiling eyes, whispered to Maria Clara, "Happy girl! I, too, would sing if I could!"
"That's right! I was in the town of Los Baños. I'm going to develop some coconut-groves and I'm thinking of putting up an oil-mill. Your father will be my partner." "Nothing more than that? What a secret!" exclaimed Sinang aloud, in the tone of a cheated usurer. "I thought " "Be careful! I don't want you to make it known!" "Nor do I want to do it," replied Sinang, turning up her nose.
It was not because the convalescent had no appetite that she was not eating. It was because she was awaiting the arrival of a certain person and had taken advantage of the moment in which her Argus could not be present, the hour when Linares ate. "You will see how that ghost will stay till eight o'clock," murmured Sinang, pointing to the curate. "At eight o'clock he ought to come.
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