openly."

"Ah, that is wrong," said Dona Isabel meditatively, moving the point of
her tiny slipper on the gravel. "Then it is the young girl that shall
come in the corridor and the married lady on the balcony?"

"Well, yes."

"Good-by, ape!"

She ran swiftly down the avenue of palms to a small door at the back of
the house, turned, blew a kiss over the edge of her fan to Brace, and
disappeared. He hesitated a moment or two, then quickly rescaling the
wall, dropped into the lane outside, followed it to the gateway of the
casa, and entered the patio as Dona Isabel decorously advanced from
a darkened passage to the corridor. Although the hour of siesta had
passed, her sister, Miss Chubb, the Alcalde, and Mrs. Brimmer were still
lounging here on sofas and hammocks.

It would have been difficult for a stranger at a first glance to
discover the nationality of the ladies. Mrs. Brimmer and her friend Miss
Chubb had entirely succumbed to the extreme dishabille of the Spanish
toilet--not without a certain languid grace on the part of Mrs. Brimmer,
whose easy contour lent itself to the stayless bodice; or a certain
bashful, youthful naivete on the part of Miss Chubb, the rounded
dazzling whiteness of whose neck and shoulders half pleased and half
frightened her in her low, white, plain camisa--under the lace mantilla.

"It is SUCH a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Brace," said Mrs. Brimmer,
languidly observing the young man through the sticks of her fan; "I was
telling Don Ramon that I feared Dona Ursula had frightened you away. I
told him that your experience of American society might have caused you
to misinterpret the habitual reserve of the Castilian," she continued
with the air of being already an alien of her own country, "and I should
be only too happy to undertake the chaperoning of both these young
ladies in their social relations with our friends. And how is dear Mr.
Banks? and Mr. Crosby? whom I so seldom see now. I suppose, however,
business has its superior attractions."

But Don Ramon, with impulsive gallantry, would not--nay, COULD not--for
a moment tolerate a heresy so alarming. It was simply wildly impossible.
For why? In the presence of Dona Barbara--it exists not in the heart of
man!

"YOU cannot, of course, conceive it, Don Ramon," said Mrs. Brimmer, with
an air of gentle suffering; "but I fear it is sadly true of the American
gentlemen. They become too absorbed in their business. They forget their
du