far as to consider the
propriety of investing him with a poor relationship to her family, when
Dona Rosita herself happily stopped all further trouble. On her very
first introduction to him, that charming young lady at once accepted him
as a lunatic whose brains were turned by occult, scientific, and medical
study! Ah! she, Rosita, had heard of such cases before. Had not a
paternal ancestor of hers, one Don Diego Castro, believed he had
discovered the elixir of youth. Had he not to that end refused even to
wash him the hand, to cut him the nail of the finger and the hair of
the head! Exalted by that discovery, had he not been unsparingly
uncomplimentary to all humanity, especially to the weaker sex? Even as
the Senor Corwin!

Far from being offended at this ingenious interpretation of his
character, Ezekiel exhibited a dry gratification over it, and even
conceived an unwholesome admiration of the fair critic; he haunted her
presence and preoccupied her society far beyond Joan's most sanguine
expectations. He sat in open-mouthed enjoyment of her at the table,
he waylaid her in the garden, he attempted to teach her English. Dona
Rosita received these extraordinary advances in a no less extraordinary
manner. In the scant masculine atmosphere of the house, and the somewhat
rigid New England reserve that still pervaded it, perhaps she languished
a little, and was not averse to a slight flirtation, even with a madman.
Besides, she assumed the attitude of exercising a wholesome restraint
over him. "If we are not found dead in our bed one morning, and
extracted of our blood for a cordial, you shall thank to me for it," she
said to Joan. "Also for the not empoisoning of the coffee!"

So she permitted him to carry a chair or hammock for her into the
garden, to fetch the various articles which she was continually losing,
and which he found with his usual penetration; and to supply her with
information, in which, however, he exercised an unwonted caution. On
the other hand, certain naive recollections and admissions, which in the
quality of a voluble child she occasionally imparted to this "madman" in
return, were in the proportion of three to one.

It had been a hot day, and even the usual sunset breeze had failed that
evening to rock the tops of the outlying pine-trees or cool the heated
tiles of the pueblo roofs. There was a hush and latent expectancy in the
air that reacted upon the people with feverish unrest and uneasiness;