'No need of subterfuge'
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Dir-me-hão, que sendo Isaura uma escrava, Leoncio, para achar-se a sós com ella não precisava de semelhantes subterfugios,
It will be said to me that, Isaura being a slave, Leôncio needed no such subterfuges to find himself alone with her,
The narrator steps forward in the first person to anticipate the reader's objection — 'Dir-me-hão,' it will be said to me. Why the elaborate emptying of the house, when Isaura is a slave he could simply summon? The digression is a device, but it also forces the reader to confront the raw fact behind the melodrama: a master could indeed have a woman he owns 'brought before him by fair means or foul.' By raising the horror plainly, Guimarães sharpens his abolitionist point.
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