'Washed up from the southern seas'
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Veio de arribação lá dos mares do sul, minha amiga, e a julgar pelas apparencias não é de todo má.
She was cast up from the southern seas, my dear, and to judge by appearances she is not altogether bad.
The phrase 'veio de arribação' is a nautical term — 'arribada' is a ship's forced, unscheduled putting-in to port, driven by storm or distress — and used of a person it means, dismissively, someone who has washed up from nowhere, blown in by chance. It is an unusually apt slur, for Isaura did arrive as a kind of castaway, driven north by the storm of her escape. The grudging concession — 'não é de todo má', not altogether bad-looking — is the envious woman's maximum generosity, admiration squeezed out through clenched teeth. Guimarády lets the ladies' contempt keep brushing the truth of Isaura's situation (a fugitive, a castaway, from the south) while missing it entirely, so that every catty remark is both wrong and, at a slant, right. The comedy of the scene is built entirely on this near-miss between the gossips' guesses and the reader's knowledge.
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