the expression of content.

"Surely it is not going to rain?" said Winthrop, examining the sky.

"They are sun-umbrellas; you may need them," answered his hostess, with
a certain increased primness of accentuation, which immediately brought
to his mind the idea that the carrier of these articles would represent
the duenna whom she considered necessary.

"A Spanish graft, that, on the original New England tree," was his
mental comment. "I wonder how many more there are?"

But the descendant of the Spaniards was speaking for herself. "We do not
want Raquel, mamma; we can carry the umbrellas ourselves." And she
passed into the darkened drawing-room, from which opened the little
balcony where they had been sitting.

Winthrop, after taking leave of Mrs. Thorne, followed Garda. But he had
the conviction that a duenna of some sort, though it might not be
Raquel, would be improvised from that balcony before long, and sent
after them.

He had already paid several visits to these ladies, and knew his way
through the interior dimness, but the old house still attracted him, and
he did not hurry his steps; he looked again at the rooms, which, with
their few articles of furniture, had to northern eyes an appearance of
cool shaded emptiness, the broad open spaces having been purposely left
to give place for the free passage of air. The vaulted ceilings deep in
shadow, the archways in place of the northern doors, one room panelled
to the top in dark polished wood which glimmered dimly as he passed
through--all these he liked to note. Beyond, the stone stairway made a
leisurely, broad-stepped descent. The high wainscot on the wall at its
side showed pomegranates stiffly carved in low relief, and the
balustrade of the same dark wood ended in a clumsy column, with a heavy
wreath of the fruit wound round it, the conventional outlines worn into
vagueness by the touch of time.

The old house was built of stone, the porous shell-conglomerate of that
coast. The thick blocks had been covered with an outer coat of plaster,
and painted a shadeless gray-white. The structure extended itself over a
large space of ground. Blank, unadorned, covered by a flat roof, without
so much as the projection of a cornice to break their monotony, the
walls stretched evenly round a parallelogram, and having but two stories
of height, looked low in comparison with their length. But the old house
in reality was not so large as it appeared to be, these same wa