“Let the child go with me for an hour, Rachela. The kerchief will be so becoming to you. There is not another in San Antonio like it.”
Rachela was past forty, but not yet past the age of coquetry. “It will look gorgeous with my gold ear-rings, but—”
“I will give you also the blue satin bow like it, to wear at your breast.”
“Si, si! I will give the permission, Senorita—for your sake alone. The kerchief and bow are a little thing to you. To me, they will be a great adornment. You are not to leave the garden, however, and for one hour’s walk only, Senorita; certainly there is time for no more.”
“I will take care of Isabel; no harm shall come to her. You may keep your eyes shut for one hour, Rachela, and you may shut your ears also, and put your feet on the couch and let them rest. I will watch Isabel carefully, be sure of that.”
“The child is very clever, and she has a lover already, I fear. Keep your eyes on the myrtle hedge that skirts the road. I have to say this—it is not for nothing she wants to walk with you this afternoon. She would be better fast asleep.”
In a few moments the kerchief and the bow were safely folded in the capacious pocket of Rachela’s apron, and Isabel and Antonia were softly treading the shady walk between the myrtle hedges. Rachela’s eyes were apparently fast closed when the girls pased{sic} her, but she did not fail to notice how charmingly Isabel had dressed herself. She wore, it is true, her Spanish costume; but she had red roses at her breast, and her white lace mantilla over her head.
“Ah! she is a clever little thing!” Rachela muttered. “She knows that she is irresistible in her Castilian dress. Bah! those French frocks are enough to drive a man a mile away. I can almost forgive her now. Had she worn the French frock I would not have forgiven her. I would never have yielded again, no, not even if the Senorita Antonia should offer me her scarlet Indian shawl worked in gold. I was always a fool—Holy Mother forgive me! Well, then; I used to have my own lovers—plenty of them—handsome young arrieros and rancheros: there was Tadeo, a valento of the first class: and Buffa—and—well, I will sleep; they do not remember me, I dare say; and I have forgotten their names.”
In the mean time the sisters sat down beneath a great fig-tree. No sunshine, no shower, could penetrate its thick foliage. The wide space beneath the spreading branches was a little parlor, cool and sweet, and full of soft, green lights, and the earthy smell of turf, and the wandering scents of the garden.
Isabel’s eyes shone with an incomparable light. She was pale, but exquisitely beautiful, and even her hands and feet expressed the idea of expectation. Antonia had a piece of needlework in her hand. She affected the calmness she did not feel, for her heart was trembling for the tender little heart beating with so much love and anxiety beside her.
But Isabel’s divination, however arrived at, was not at fault. In a few moments Don Luis lightly leaped the hedge, and without a moment’s hesitation sought the shadow of the fig-tree. As he approached, Antonia looked at him with a new interest. It was not only that he loved Isabel, but that Isabel loved him. She had given him sympathy before, now she gave him a sister’s affection.
“How handsome he is!” she thought. “How gallant he looks in his velvet and silver and embroidered jacket! And how eager are his steps! And how joyful his face! He is the kind of Romeo that Shakespeare dreamed about! Isabel is really an angel to him. He would really die for her. What has this Spanish knight of the sixteenth century to do in Texas in the nineteenth century?”
He answered her mental question in his own charming way. He was so happy, so radiantly happy, so persuasive, so compelling, that Antonia granted him, without a word, the favor his eyes asked for. And the lovers hardly heard the excuse she made; they understood nothing of it, only that she would be reading in the myrtle walk for one hour, and, by so doing, would protect them from intrusion.
One whole hour! Isabel had thought the promise a perfect magnificence of opportunity{.??} But how swiftly it went. Luis had not told her the half of his love and his hopes. He had been forced to speak of politics and business, and every such word was just so many stolen from far sweeter words—words that fell like music from his lips, and were repeated with infinite power from his eyes. Low words, that had the pleading of a thousand voices in them; words full of melody, thrilling with romance; poetical, and yet real as the sunshine around them.
In lovers of a colder race, bound by conventional ties, and a dress rigorously divested of every picturesque element, such wooing might have appeared ridiculous; but in Don Luis, the most natural thing about it was its extravagance. When he knelt at the feet of his beloved and kissed her hands, the action was the unavoidable outcome of his temperament. When he said to her, “Angel mio! you are the light of my darkness, the perfume of all flowers that bloom for me, the love of my loves, my life, my youth, my lyre, my star, had I a thousand souls with which to love, I would give them all to you!” he believed every word he uttered, and he uttered every word with the passion of a believer.
He stirred into life also in the heart of Isabel a love as living as his own. In that hour she stepped outside all of her childhood’s immaturities. She became a woman. She accepted with joyful tears a woman’s lot of love and sorrow. She said to Antonia:
“Luis was in my heart before; now, I have put him in my soul. My soul will never die. So I shall never forget him—never cease to love him.”
Rachela faithfully kept her agreement. For one hour she was asleep to all her charge did, and Isabel was in her own room when the precious sixty minutes were over. Happy? So happy that her soul seemed to have pushed her body aside, as a thing not to be taken into account. She sang like a bird for very gladsomeness. It was impossible for her to be still, and as she went about her room with little dancing, balancing movements of her hands and feet, Antonia knew that they were keeping their happy rhythmic motion to the melody love sang in her heart.
And she rejoiced with her little sister, though she was not free from a certain regret for her concession, for it is the after-reckoning with conscience that is so disagreeably strict and uncomfortable. And yet, why make an element of anger and suspicion between Isabel and her mother when there appeared to be no cause to do so? Don Luis was going away. He was in disgrace with his family—almost disinherited; the country was on the point of war, and its fortunes might give him some opportunities no one now foresaw. But if Isabel’s mother had once declared that she would “never sanction the marriage,” Antonia knew that, however she might afterwards regret her haste and prejudice, she would stand passionately by her decision. Was it not better, then, to prevent words being said which might cause sorrow and regret in the future?
But as regarded Isabel’s father, no such reason existed. The happiness of his children was to him a more sacred thing than his own prejudices. He liked Don Luis, and his friendship with his mother, the Senora Alveda, was a long and tried one. The youth’s political partialities, though bringing him at present into disgrace, were such as he himself had largely helped to form. Antonia was sure that her father would sympathize with Isabel, and excuse in her the lapse of duty which had given his little girl so much happiness. Yes, it would be right to tell him every thing, and she did not fear but Isabel would agree in her decision.
At this moment Rachela entered. The Senora wished her daughters to call upon the American manteau-maker for her, and the ride in the open carriage to the Plaza would enable them to bow to their acquaintances, and exhibit their last new dresses from New Orleans. Rachela was already prepared for the excursion, and she was not long in attiring Isabel.
“To be sure, the siesta has made you look charming this afternoon,” she said, looking steadily into the girl’s beaming, blushing face, “and this rose silk is enchanting. Santa Maria, how I pity the officers who will have the great fortune to see you this afternoon, and break their hearts for the sight! But you must not look at them, mark! I shall tell the Senora if you do. It is enough if they look at you. And the American way of the Senorita Antonia, which is to bow and smile to every admirer, it will but make more enchanting the becoming modesty of the high-born Mexicaine.”
“Keep your tongue still, Rachela. Ah! if you strike me, I will go to