ighest class,
he could not have been more richly adorned. And the storm was yet
raging! It was a miracle.

"Dear Luis, sit down! Here is a chair close to Iza! Tell her your
secrets a few minutes, and I will go for mi madre. O yes! She will come!
You shall see, Iza! And then, Luis, we shall have some supper."

"You see that I am in heaven already, Antonia; though, indeed, I am also
hungry and thirsty, my sister."

Antonia was not a minute in reaching her mother's room. The unhappy lady
was half-lying among the large pillows of her gilded bed, wide awake.
Her black eyes were fixed upon a crucifix at its foot, and she was
slowly murmuring prayers upon her rosary.

"Madre! Madre! Luis is here, Luis is here! Come quick, mi madre. Here
are your stockings and slippers, and your gown, and your mantilla--no,
no, no, do not call Rachela. Luis has news of my father, and of Jack!
Oh, madre, he has a letter from Jack to you! Come dear, come, in a few
minutes you will be ready."

She was urging and kissing the trembling woman, and dressing her in
despite of her faint effort to delay--to call Rachela--to bring Luis
to her room. In ten minutes she was ready. She went down softly, like a
frightened child, Antonia cheering and encouraging her in whispers.

When she entered the cheerful parlor the shadow of a smile flitted
over her wan face. Luis ran to meet her. He drew the couch close to the
hearth; he helped Antonia arrange her comfortably upon it. He made her
tea, and kissed her hands when he put it into them. And then Isabel made
Luis a cup, and cut his tamales, and waited upon him with such pretty
service, that the happy lover thought he was eating a meal in Paradise.

For a few minutes it had been only this ordinary gladness of reunion;
but it was impossible to ignore longer the anxiety in the eyes that
asked him so many questions. He took two letters from his pockets and
gave them to the Senora. They were from her husband and Jack. Her hands
trembled; she kissed them fervently; and as she placed them in her
breast her tears dropped down upon them.

Antonia opened the real conversation with that never-failing wedge,
the weather. "You came through the storm, Luis? Yet you are not wet,
scarcely? Now then, explain this miracle."

"I went first to Lopez Navarro's. Do you not know this festa dress? It
is the one Lopez bought for the feast of St. James. He lent it to me,
for I assure you that my own clothing was like that of a