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“There’s nothing whatever to tell, my love! It seems, however, that the young one, Dona Felipa, has seen Dick, and remembers him.” She shot a keen glance at Dick, but was obliged to admit that the rascal’s face remained unchanged. “And I wanted to bring a cavalier for YOU, dear, but Don Jose’s nephew isn’t at home now.” Yet here, to her surprise, Cecily was faintly blushing.

Early in the afternoon the piebald horses and dark brown chariot of the Amadors drew up before the gateway. The young people were delighted with Dona Felipa, and thought her blue eyes and tawny hair gave an added piquancy to her colorless satin skin and otherwise distinctively Spanish face and figure. Aunt Viney, who entertained Donna Maria, was nevertheless watchful of the others; but failed to detect in Dick’s effusive greeting, or the Dona’s coquettish smile of recognition, any suggestion of previous confidences. It was rather to Cecily that Dona Felipa seemed to be characteristically exuberant and childishly feminine. Both mother and stepdaughter spoke a musical infantine English, which the daughter supplemented with her eyes, her eyebrows, her little brown fingers, her plump shoulders, a dozen charming intonations of voice, and a complete vocabulary in her active and emphatic fan.

The young lady went over the house with Cecily curiously, as if recalling some old memories. “Ah, yes, I remember it–but it was long ago and I was very leetle–you comprehend, and I have not arrive mooch when the old Don was alone. It was too–too–what you call melank-oaly. And the old man have not make mooch to himself of company.”

“Then there were no young people in the house, I suppose?” said Cecily, smiling.

“No–not since the old man’s father lif. Then there were TWO. It is a good number, this two, eh?” She gave a single gesture, which took in, with Cecily, the distant Dick, and with a whole volume of suggestion in her shoulders, and twirling fan, continued: “Ah! two sometime make one–is it not? But not THEN in the old time–ah, no! It is a sad story. I shall tell it to you some time, but not to HIM.”

But Cecily’s face betrayed no undue bashful consciousness, and she only asked, with a quiet smile, “Why not to–to my cousin?”

“Imbecile!” responded that lively young lady.

After dinner the young people proposed to take Dona Felipa into the rose garden, while Aunt Viney entertained Donna Maria on the veranda. The young girl threw up her hands with an affectation of horror. “Santa Maria!–in the rose garden? After the Angelus, you and him? Have you not heard?”

But here Donna Maria interposed. Ah! Santa Maria! What was all that! Was it not enough to talk old woman’s gossip and tell vaqueros tales at home, without making uneasy the strangers? She would have none of it. “Vamos!”

Nevertheless Dona Felipa overcame her horror of the rose garden at infelicitous hours, so far as to permit herself to be conducted by the cousins into it, and to be installed like a rose queen on the stone bench, while Dick and Cecily threw themselves in submissive and imploring attitudes at her little feet. The young girl looked mischievously from one to the other.

“It ees very pret-ty, but all the same I am not a rose: I am what you call a big goose-berry! Eh–is it not?”

The cousins laughed, but without any embarrassed consciousness. “Dona Felipa knows a sad story of this house,” said Cecily; “but she will not tell it before you, Dick.”

Dick, looking up at the coquettish little figure, with Heaven knows what OTHER memories in his mind, implored and protested.

“Ah! but this little story–she ees not so mooch sad of herself as she ees str-r-r-ange!” She gave an exaggerated little shiver under her lace shawl, and closed her eyes meditatively.

“Go on,” said Dick, smiling in spite of his interested expectation.

Dona Felipa took her fan in both hands, spanning her knees, leaned forward, and after a preliminary compressing of her lips and knitting of her brows, said:–