she
concluded triumphantly.

"But I have great appreciation and I am dying to hear it," said
Demorest, trying to laugh.

"Well, poor one, you look so. But you shall lif till another time," said
Dona Rosita, with a mock courtesy, gliding with Joan away.

The "other time" came that evening when chocolate was served on the
veranda, where Dona Rosita, mantilla-draped against the dry, clear,
moonlit air, sat at the feet of Joan on the lowest step. Demorest,
uneasily observant of the influence of the giddy foreigner on his wife,
and conscious of certain confidences between them from which he was
excluded, leaned against a pillar of the porch in half abstracted
resignation; Joan, under the tutelage of Rosita, lit a cigarette;
Demorest gazed at her wonderingly, trying to recall, in her fuller and
more animated face, some memory of the pale, refined profile of the
Puritan girl he had first met in the Boston train, the faint aurora of
whose cheek in that northern clime seemed to come and go with his words.
Becoming conscious at last of the eyes of Dona Rosita watching him from
below, with an effort he recalled his duty as her host and gallantly
reminded her that moonlight and the hour seemed expressly fitted for her
promised love story.

"Do tell it," said Joan, "I don't mind hearing it again."

"Then you know it already?" said Demorest, surprised.

Joan took the cigarette from her lips, laughed complacently, and
exchanged a familiar glance with Rosita. "She told it me a year ago,
when we first knew each other," she replied. "Go on, dear," to Rosita.

Thus encouraged, Dona Rosita began, addressing herself first in Spanish
to Demorest, who understood the language better than his wife, and
lapsing into her characteristic English as she appealed to them both.
It was really very little to interest Don Ricardo--this story of a silly
muchacha like herself and a strange caballero. He would go to sleep
while she was talking, and to-night he would say to his wife, "Mother of
God! why have you brought here this chattering parrot who speaks but of
one thing?" But she would go on always like the windmill, whether there
was grain to grind or no. "It was four years ago. Ah! Don Ricardo did
not remember the country then--it was when the first Americans came--now
it is different. Then there were no coaches--in truth one travelled
very little, and always on horseback, only to see one's neighbors. And
suddenly, as if in one day, it was cha