rary directly after breakfast; and
Cecily was equally reticent, except when, to Aunt Viney's perplexity,
she found excuses for Dick's manner on the ground of his absorption in
his work, and that he was probably being bored by want of society. She
proposed that she should ask an old schoolfellow to visit them.

"It would give Dick a change of ideas, and he would not be perpetually
obliged to look so closely after me." She blushed slightly under Aunt
Viney's gaze, and added hastily, "I mean, of course, he would not feel
it his DUTY."

She even induced her aunt to drive with her to the old mission church,
where she displayed a pretty vivacity and interest in the people they
met, particularly a few youthful and picturesque caballeros. Aunt Viney
smiled gravely. Was the poor child developing an unlooked-for coquetry,
or preparing to make the absent-minded Dick jealous? Well, the idea was
not a bad one. In the evening she astonished the two cousins by offering
to accompany them into the garden--a suggestion accepted with eager and
effusive politeness by each, but carried out with great awkwardness by
the distrait young people later. Aunt Viney clearly saw that it was not
her PRESENCE that was required. In this way two or three days elapsed
without apparently bringing the relations of Dick and Cecily to any more
satisfactory conclusion. The diplomatic Aunt Viney confessed herself
puzzled.

One night it was very warm; the usual trade winds had died away before
sunset, leaving an unwonted hush in sky and plain. There was something
so portentous in this sudden withdrawal of that rude stimulus to the
otherwise monotonous level, that a recurrence of such phenomena was
always known as "earthquake weather." The wild cattle moved uneasily in
the distance without feeding; herds of unbroken mustangs approached
the confines of the hacienda in vague timorous squads. The silence and
stagnation of the old house was oppressive, as if the life had really
gone out of it at last; and Aunt Viney, after waiting impatiently for
the young people to come in to chocolate, rose grimly, set her lips
together, and went out into the lane. The gate of the rose garden
opposite was open. She walked determinedly forward and entered.

In that doubly stagnant air the odor of the roses was so suffocating
and overpowering that she had to stop to take breath. The whole garden,
except a near cluster of pear-trees, was brightly illuminated by the
moonlight. No