Marcela is the Spanish woman with whom Brás Cubas falls in love at seventeen, his first liaison and the one that costs him dearly. The young men call her "pretty Marcela", and Brás describes her as "luxurious, impatient, fond of money and of young men".
He sees her on the night of the illuminations for independence, follows her like a page, and at the supper to which his uncle João takes him, kisses her on the stairs. It takes him thirty days to reach her heart and, to sustain her reign, he takes money from his father and mother and signs bonds against the inheritance. Marcela says she sold appearances and kept reality for a few. When his father discovers the eleven contos spent and decides to send his son to Europe, she answers his humiliation with "Don't Bore Me" and agrees to the departure only after looking at the ivory comb with three diamonds that he brings her. Brás's tally is dry: she loved him "for fifteen months and eleven contos de réis".
Years later he meets her again, aged, scarred by smallpox, owner of a jewelry shop on Rua dos Ourives; she recognizes him, tells him her life and offers him jewels at a low price. In a rare moment when the book records a feeling of hers without irony, Marcela's voice trembles with joy as she kisses the daughter of a neighboring watchmaker. Marcela dies in the hospital of the Third Order, ugly and decrepit, on the same day Brás finds Eugênia in a tenement.