ton, who appeared as regularly as
a clock strikes, to spend hours and hours staring at her, pale,
shrinking with an absurd consciousness of inferiority, and often
answering her questions with stupid phrases that made her laugh.

Her irony and deliberate frankness wounded Rafael cruelly. "Hello,
Rafaelito," she would say sometimes as he came in. "You here again?
Better look out! People will be talking about us before long. Then what
will mama say to you?" And Rafael would be stung to the quick. What a
disgrace, to be tied to a mother's apron-strings, and have to stoop to
all those subterfuges to visit this place without raising a rumpus at
home!

But try as he would, meanwhile, he could not shake off the spell that
Leonora was exercising over him.

Besides, what wonderful afternoons when she deigned to be good!
Sometimes, wearied with walks about the open country, and bored, as
might have been expected of a frivolous, fickle character like hers,
with the monotony of the landscape of orange-trees and palms, she would
take refuge in her parlor, and sit down at the piano! With the hushed
awe of a pious worshipper, Rafael would take a chair in a corner, and
gluing his eyes upon those two majestic shoulders over which curly
tresses fell like golden plumes, he would listen to her rich, sweet,
mellow voice as it blended with the languishing chords of the piano;
while through the open windows the breath of the murmurous orchard made
its way drenched in the golden light of autumn, saturated with the
seasoned perfume of the ripe oranges that peered with faces of fire
through the festoons of leaves.

Shubert, with his moody romances, was her favorite composer. The
melancholy of that sad music had a peculiar fascination for her in her
solitude. Her passionate, tumultuous soul seemed to fall into a
languorous enervation under the fragrance of the orange blossoms. At
times, she would be assailed by sudden recollections of triumphs on the
stage, and on such occasions, setting the piano ringing with the sublime
fury of the Valkyries' Ride, she would begin to shout Brunhilde's
"Hojotojo," the impetuous, savage war-cry of Wotan's daughter--a
melodious scream with which she had brought many an audience to its
feet, and which, in that deserted paradise, made Rafael shudder and
admire, as if the singer were some strange divinity--a blond goddess
with green eyes, wont to charge across the ice-fields through whirlwinds
of driving snow, bu