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“What are you looking at? Is my hair coming down?”

“No,” hesitated Dick, “but–I–thought–you were looking just a LITTLE pale.”

An aggressive ray slipped into her blue eyes.

“Strange! I thought YOU were. Just now at the grille you looked as if the roses hadn’t agreed with you.”

They both laughed, a little nervously, and Conchita brought the chocolate. When Aunt Viney came from the drawing-room she found the two young people together, and Cecily in a gale of high spirits.

She had had SUCH a wonderfully interesting walk, all by herself, alone on the plain. It was really so queer and elfish to find one’s self where one could see nothing above or around one anywhere but stars. Stars above one, to right and left of one, and some so low down they seemed as if they were picketed on the plain. It was so odd to find the horizon line at one’s very feet, like a castaway at sea. And the wind! it seemed to move one this way and that way, for one could not see anything, and might really be floating in the air. Only once she thought she saw something, and was quite frightened.

“What was it?” asked Dick quickly.

“Well, it was a large black object; but–it turned out only to be a horse.”

She laughed, although she had evidently noticed her cousin’s eagerness, and her own eyes had a nervous brightness.

“And where was Dick all this while?” asked Aunt Viney quietly.

Cecily interrupted, and answered for him briskly. “Oh, he was trying to make attar of rose of himself in the garden. He’s still stupefied by his own sweetness.”

“If this means,” said Aunt Viney, with matter-of-fact precision, “that you’ve been gallivanting all alone, Cecily, on that common plain, where you’re likely to meet all sorts of foreigners and tramps and savages, and Heaven knows what other vermin, I shall set my face against a repetition of it. If you MUST go out, and Dick can’t go with you–and I must say that even you and he going out together there at night isn’t exactly the kind of American Christian example to set to our neighbors–you had better get Concepcion to go with you and take a lantern.”

“But there is nobody one meets on the plain–at least, nobody likely to harm one,” protested Cecily.

“Don’t tell ME,” said Aunt Viney decidedly; “haven’t I seen all sorts of queer figures creeping along by the brink after nightfall between San Gregorio and the next rancho? Aren’t they always skulking backwards and forwards to mass and aguardiente?”

“And I don’t know why WE should set any example to our neighbors. We don’t see much of them, or they of us.”

“Of course not,” returned Aunt Viney; “because all proper Spanish young ladies are shut up behind their grilles at night. You don’t see THEM traipsing over the plain in the darkness, WITH or WITHOUT cavaliers! Why, Don Rafael would lock one of HIS sisters up in a convent and consider her disgraced forever, if he heard of it.”

Dick felt his cheeks burning; Cecily slightly paled. Yet both said eagerly together: “Why, what do YOU know about it, Aunty?”

“A great deal,” returned Aunt Viney quietly, holding her tatting up to the light and examining the stitches with a critical eye. “I’ve got my eyes about me, thank heaven! even if my ears don’t understand the language. And there’s a great deal, my dears, that you young people might learn from these Papists.”

“And do you mean to say,” continued Dick, with a glowing cheek and an uneasy smile, “that Spanish girls don’t go out alone?”

“No young LADY goes out without her duenna,” said Aunt Viney emphatically. “Of course there’s the Concha variety, that go out without even stockings.”

As the conversation flagged after this, and the young people once or twice yawned nervously, Aunt Viney thought they had better go to bed.

But Dick did not sleep. The beautiful face beamed out again from the darkness of his room; the light that glimmered through his deep-set curtainless windows had an odd trick of bringing out certain hanging articles, or pieces of furniture, into a resemblance to a mantled figure. The deep, velvety eyes, fringed with long brown lashes, again looked into his with amused, childlike curiosity. He scouted the harsh criticisms of Aunt Viney, even while he shrank from proving to her her mistake in the quality of his mysterious visitant. Of course she was a lady–far superior to any of her race whom he had yet met. Yet how should he find WHO she was? His pride and a certain chivalry forbade his questioning the servants–before whom it was the rule of the household to avoid all reference to their neighbors. He would make the acquaintance of the old padre–perhaps HE might talk. He would ride early along the trail in the direction of the nearest rancho,–Don Jose Amador’s,–a thing he had hitherto studiously refrained from doing. It was three miles away. She must have come that distance, but not ALONE. Doubtless she had kept her duenna in waiting in the road. Perhaps it was she who had frightened Cecily. Had Cecily told ALL she had seen? Her embarrassed manner certainly suggested more than she had told. He felt himself turning hot with an indefinite uneasiness. Then he tried to compose himself. After all, it was a thing of the past. The fair unknown had bribed the duenna for once, no doubt–had satisfied her girlish curiosity–she would not come again! But this thought brought with it such a sudden sense of utter desolation, a deprivation so new and startling, that it frightened him. Was his head turned by the witcheries of some black-eyed schoolgirl whom he had seen but once? Or–he felt his cheeks glowing in the darkness–was it really a case of love at first sight, and she herself had been impelled by the same yearning that now possessed him? A delicious satisfaction followed, that left a smile on his lips as if it had been a kiss. He knew now why he had so strangely hesitated with Cecily. He had never really loved her–he had never known what love was till now!