Her name is Elvira
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Mas sempre te direi que o que sei de positivo a respeito della é que veio do Rio-Grande do Sul em companhia de seo pae, de quem é ella a unica familia; que seos meios são bastantemente escassos, mas que em compensação ella é linda como os anjos, e tem o nome de Elvira.
But I will tell you what I know for certain of her: that she came from Rio Grande do Sul with her father, whose only family she is; that their means are quite scanty, but that in compensation she is lovely as the angels, and bears the name of Elvira.
Here is the cover story, and every clause is a careful fiction: 'Elvira', come from 'Rio-Grande do Sul' — the far south, the opposite end of the Empire from her true origin, chosen precisely because distance protects. The false name and false province are Miguel's craft, a whole second identity built to hide a hunted woman. The detail that their 'meios são bastantemente escassos', their means quite scanty, is true and poignant — the escape has left father and daughter poor — and Álvaro's phrase 'em compensação ella é linda', in compensation she is lovely, unknowingly states the book's peril: her beauty, her one 'wealth', is also the thing that draws every eye and endangers the disguise. The name 'Elvira', Romantic and literary, is the mask; 'Isaura' waits beneath it, and the whole chapter's suspense is how thin the mask really is.
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