THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY
inconveniences, not to say terrors, of her new position did not seem to her excessive for a girl of fourteen. She did not suspect that the Abbess, even there, was hovering above the house, herself estimating the stresses and watching for the moment when a burden harms and not strengthens.
A few of Pepita’s trials were physical: for example, the servants in the house took advantage of Doña María’s indisposition; they opened up the bedrooms of the palace to their relatives; they stole freely. Alone Pepita stood out against them and suffered a persecution of small discomforts and practical jokes. Her mind, similarly, had its distresses: when she accompanied Doña María on her errands in the city, the older woman would be seized with the desire to dash into a church, for what she had lost of religion as faith she had replaced with religion as magic. “Stay here in the sunlight, my dear child; I shall not be long,” she would say. Doña María would then forget herself in a reverie before the altar and leave the
64
