What had escaped her earlier
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que lhe sairam do peito, pouco antes,
that had escaped her chest, a little earlier,
The insults had slipped out shortly before.
The image 'sairam do peito' — escaped from her breast — locates the earlier insults as a rush of genuine feeling, not calculation. They burst out; they were not planned. Machado is careful to mark them as involuntary, the honest overflow of a girl who resented the woman keeping her from Bento.
The phrasing matters for the novel's argument about Capitú. A heart that lets things escape it is a transparent heart, not a scheming one — the very opposite of the dissembler Bento will later imagine. Her anger came from the chest, unfiltered, and her retraction came just as freely. In these two spontaneous movements, resentment and repair, Machado shows a nature that acts from feeling and then judges the feeling. It is the portrait of an honest girl, offered before the long shadow of doubt falls across her.
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