Читать книгу Weeds онлайн

32 страница из 71

His sweetheart was a very winsome creature; she seemed to Manuel even pretty, despite her red hair and her lashes and eyebrows of the same colour. She had a pale little face, somewhat freckled, a pinkish, turned-up nose, clear eyes and lips so red and alluring that they roused a desire to kiss them. She was of diminutive build, but very well formed. She did not trill her r’s, gliding over them, and pronounced her c’s before e and i as s instead of th.

She seemed to be genuinely in love with Bernardo, and this shocked Manuel.

“She can’t really know him,” he thought.

Bernardo, with an unlimited conviction of his own knowledge, explained to the girl all the work he was doing and how he was going to arrange the laboratory. Whatever he had heard from Roberto he spouted forth to his sweetheart with the most unheard-of impudence. The girl found everything sailing along very nicely; doubtless she foresaw a rosy future.

Manuel, who saw through the swindle that Bernardo was perpetrating, wondered whether it would not be an act of charity to inform the blonde miss that her sweetheart was a good-for-nothing mountebank. But, after all, what business was it of his?