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“My dear aunt,” said Dick, with a sudden illogical heat which he tried to suppress; “I don’t know what you mean by ‘it’ and ‘something.’ Ringstone’s offer was perfectly unselfish; he certainly did not suppose that I would be affected, any more than he would he, by the childish sentimentality of these people over a legitimate, every-day business affair. The old Don made a good bargain, and simply sold the land he could no longer make profitable with his obsolete method of farming, his gang of idle retainers, and his Noah’s Ark machinery, to a man who knew how to use steam reapers, and hired sensible men to work on shares.” Nevertheless he was angry with himself for making any explanation, and still more disturbed that he was conscious of a certain feeling that it was necessary.

“I was thinking,” said Aunt Viney quietly, “that if we invited anybody to stay with us–like Cecily, for example–it might be rather dull for her if we had no neighbors to introduce her to.”

Dick started; he had not thought of this. He had been greatly influenced by the belief that his pretty cousin, who was to make them a visit, would like the change and would not miss excitement. “We can always invite some girls down there and make our own company,” he answered cheerfully. Nevertheless, he was dimly conscious that he had already made an airy castle of the old hacienda, in which Cecily and her aunt moved ALONE. It was to Cecily that he would introduce the old garden, it was Cecily whom he would accompany through the dark corridors, and with whom he would lounge under the awnings of the veranda. All this innocently, and without prejudice or ulterior thought. He was not yet in love with the pretty cousin whom he had seen but once or twice during the past few years, but it was a possibility not unpleasant to occasionally contemplate. Yet it was equally possible that she might yearn for lighter companionship and accustomed amusement; that the passion-fringed garden and shadow-haunted corridor might be profaned by hoydenish romping and laughter, or by that frivolous flirtation which, in others, he had always regarded as commonplace and vulgar.

Howbeit, at the end of two weeks he found himself regularly installed in the Hacienda de los Osos. His little household, re-enforced by his cousin Cecily and three peons picked up at Los Pinos, bore their transplantation with a singular equanimity that seemed to him unaccountable. Then occurred one of those revelations of character with which Nature is always ready to trip up merely human judgment. Aunt Viney, an unrelenting widow of calm but unshaken Dutch prejudices, high but narrow in religious belief, merged without a murmur into the position of chatelaine of this unconventional, half-Latin household. Accepting the situation without exaltation or criticism, placid but unresponsive amidst the youthful enthusiasm of Dick and Cecily over each quaint detail, her influence was, nevertheless, felt throughout the lingering length and shadowy breadth of the strange old house. The Indian and Mexican servants, at first awed by her practical superiority, succumbed to her half-humorous toleration of their incapacity, and became her devoted slaves. Dick was astonished, and even Cecily was confounded. “Do you know,” she said confidentially to her cousin, “that when that brown Conchita thought to please Aunty by wearing white stockings instead of going round as usual with her cinnamon-colored bare feet in yellow slippers–which I was afraid would be enough to send Aunty into conniption fits–she actually told her, very quietly, to take them off, and dress according to her habits and her station? And you remember that in her big, square bedroom there is a praying-stool and a ghastly crucifix, at least three feet long, in ivory and black, quite too human for anything? Well, when I offered to put them in the corridor, she said I ‘needn’t trouble’; that really she hadn’t noticed them, and they would do very well where they were. You’d think she had been accustomed to this sort of thing all her life. It’s just too sweet of her, any way, even if she’s shamming. And if she is, she just does it to the life too, and could give those Spanish women points. Why, she rode en pillion on Manuel’s mule, behind him, holding on by his sash, across to the corral yesterday; and you should have seen Manuel absolutely scrape the ground before her with his sombrero when he let her down.” Indeed, her tall, erect figure in black lustreless silk, appearing in a heavily shadowed doorway, or seated in a recessed window, gave a new and patrician dignity to the melancholy of the hacienda. It was pleasant to follow this quietly ceremonious shadow gliding along the rose garden at twilight, halting at times to bend stiffly over the bushes, garden-shears in hand, and carrying a little basket filled with withered but still odorous petals, as if she were grimly gathering the faded roses of her youth.