Of what?
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Justina — — De quê?
Of what?
Justina takes the bait and asks.
Two words, and the trap closes exactly as Bento designed. By asking 'De quê?' Justina makes his request something she invited, lowering her guard to receive it. Machado has staged this precise mechanism before — Dona Glória's 'Que difficuldade?' in the opening chapters — and repeats it here to show the pattern hardening into method.
The economy is the point. The whole family speaks in these small elicitations, each drawing the other out a step before committing anything. Justina, who moments ago coached Bento never to let on what he knew, now lets herself be drawn into the open by a boy running her own game. The scene is a miniature of how manipulation propagates in this house, passed hand to hand like a household skill.
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