And the tone of them
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e o tom dellas.
and the tone of them.
Not only the words, but how they were spoken.
The demand deepens: after the words, the tone. Capitú knows that in this family the truth is carried by inflection — a warning said gently, a threat said as concern. She is asking Bento to reproduce the music of the speech, not just its text.
It is a striking thing for a fourteen-year-old to require, and it marks her as the novel's finest interpreter of people. Where José Dias loads meaning into swollen words, Capitú listens for the meaning under them. Machado, who built a whole career on ambiguity of tone, gives his heroine his own ear. The cruel joke of the book is that this same acuity, turned by Bento's imagination against her, becomes the 'proof' of her supposed talent for deceit.
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