'I have a bad feeling'
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Tenho má fé, continuou o doutor todas as vezes, que vejo uma mulher bonita viajando em paizes estranhos em companhia de um homem, que de ordinario se diz pae ou irmão della.
I have a bad feeling, the doctor went on, every time I see a beautiful woman travelling in foreign parts in the company of a man who ordinarily calls himself her father or brother.
Geraldo's worldly suspicion falls, cruelly, on the truest bond in the book. He distrusts the woman travelling with a man 'que de ordinario se diz pae' — who ordinarily says he is her father — the phrase dripping with insinuation that the paternity is a cover for something sordid. But Miguel is her father, in every way that the heart counts: the man who kept the canoe ready, who rowed her free, who offered his savings for her freedom. The doctor's cynicism cannot conceive of a devotion so pure precisely because his world runs on suspicion, and Guimarães lets the contrast wound: the one genuinely selfless love in the ballroom's field of vision is the one the clever man is surest is a fraud. Innocence, to the knowing eye, always looks like the best disguise.
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