'What you say horrifies me'
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O que o senhor acaba de dizer, me horroriza. Como se pode esquecer e abandonar ao desprezo uma mulher tão amante e carinhosa, tão cheia de encantos e virtudes, como sinhá Malvina?
What you have just said horrifies me. How can one forget and cast into contempt a woman so loving and tender, so full of charms and virtues, as senhora Malvina?
Isaura's first instinct on being offered Malvina's place is to defend Malvina. The enslaved woman, invited to triumph over her mistress, instead recoils at the cruelty being done to her — 'me horroriza.' It is a quiet reversal of everything the scene assumes: Leôncio treats both women as things to be arranged, and Isaura answers as the only person present who sees them as people. Her praise of Malvina — 'tão amante e carinhosa, tão cheia de encantos e virtudes' — is also, tacitly, a rebuke: these are the goods Leôncio is throwing away, and he cannot see them because he has never valued a woman for anything but possession.
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