'Who is that girl?'
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Você não saberá dizer-nos, D. Adelaide, quem é aquella moça, que ainda ha pouco entrou na sala pelo braço do senhor Alvaro?
Could you not tell us, Dona Adelaide, who that girl is who just now came into the room on the arm of Senhor Álvaro?
The women's inquiry opens on the same question the men asked — who is she? — but the tone has already curdled. Where Álvaro's friends wanted to know so as to admire, the ladies want to know so as to place, and, finding they cannot place her, to disparage. 'Aquella moça', that girl, is faintly dismissive where the men said 'fada' and 'deosa'. Guimarády stages the female chorus as the shadow-side of the male one: the same beauty that drew the men's worship draws the women's suspicion and envy. And their curiosity, like the men's, circles the fatal want of information — no one knows who she is — but where ignorance made the men romanticize, it will make the women malign. The reader, holding the real answer, watches both groups grope around the truth.
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