“Of course not,” returned Aunt Viney; “because all proper Spanish young ladies are shut up behind their grilles at night. You don't see THEM traipsing over the plain in the darkness, WITH or WITHOUT cavaliers! Why, Don Rafael would lock one of HIS sisters up in a convent and consider her disgraced forever, if he heard of it.”
Dick felt his cheeks burning; Cecily slightly paled. Yet both said eagerly together: “Why, what do YOU know about it, Aunty?”
“A great deal,” returned Aunt Viney quietly, holding her tatting up to the light and examining the stitches with a critical eye. “I've got my eyes about me, thank heaven! even if my ears don't understand the language. And there's a great deal, my dears, that you young people might learn from these Papists.”
“And do you mean to say,” continued Dick, with a glowing cheek and an uneasy smile, “that Spanish girls don't go out alone?”
“No young LADY goes out without her duenna,” said Aunt Viney emphatically. “Of course there's the Concha variety, that go out without even stockings.”
As the conversation flagged after this, and the young people once or twice yawned nervously, Aunt Viney thought they had better go to bed.
But Dick did not sleep. The beautiful face beamed out again from the darkness of his room; the light that glimmered through his deep-set curtainless windows had an odd trick of bringing out certain hanging articles, or pieces of furniture, into a resemblance to a mantled figure. The deep, velvety eyes, fringed with long brown lashes, again looked into his with amused, childlike curiosity. He scouted the harsh criticisms of Aunt Viney, even while he shrank from proving to her her mistake in the quality of his mysterious visitant. Of course she was a lady—far superior to any of her race whom he had yet met. Yet how should he find WHO she was? His pride and a certain chivalry forbade his questioning the servants—before whom it was the rule of the household to avoid all reference to their neighbors. He would make the acquaintance of the old padre—perhaps HE might talk. He would ride early along the trail in the direction of the nearest rancho,—Don Jose Amador's,—a thing he had hitherto studiously refrained from doing. It was three miles away. She must have come that distance, but not ALONE. Doubtless she had kept her duenna in waiting in the road. Perhaps it was she who had frightened Cecily. Had Cecily told ALL she had seen? Her embarrassed manner certainly suggested more than she had told. He felt himself turning hot with an indefinite uneasiness. Then he tried to compose himself. After all, it was a thing of the past. The fair unknown had bribed the duenna for once, no doubt—had satisfied her girlish curiosity—she would not come again! But this thought brought with it such a sudden sense of utter desolation, a deprivation so new and startling, that it frightened him. Was his head turned by the witcheries of some black-eyed schoolgirl whom he had seen but once? Or—he felt his cheeks glowing in the darkness—was it really a case of love at first sight, and she herself had been impelled by the same yearning that now possessed him? A delicious satisfaction followed, that left a smile on his lips as if it had been a kiss. He knew now why he had so strangely hesitated with Cecily. He had never really loved her—he had never known what love was till now!
He was up early the next morning, skimming the plain on the back of “Chu Chu,” before the hacienda was stirring. He did not want any one to suspect his destination, and it was even with a sense of guilt that he dashed along the swale in the direction of the Amador rancho. A few vaqueros, an old Digger squaw carrying a basket, two little Indian acolytes on their way to mass passed him. He was surprised to find that there were no ruts of carriage wheels within three miles of the casa, and evidently no track for carriages through the swale. SHE must have come on HORSEBACK. A broader highway, however, intersected the trail at a point where the low walls of the Amador rancho came in view. Here he was startled by the apparition of an old-fashioned family carriage drawn by two large piebald mules. But it was unfortunately closed. Then, with a desperate audacity new to his reserved nature, he ranged close beside it, and even stared in the windows. A heavily mantled old woman, whose brown face was in high contrast to her snow-white hair, sat in the back seat. Beside her was a younger companion, with the odd blonde hair and blue eyes sometimes seen in the higher Castilian type. For an instant the blue eyes caught his, half-coquettishly. But the girl was NOT at all like his mysterious visitor, and he fell, discomfited, behind.
He had determined to explain his trespass on the grounds of his neighbor, if questioned, by the excuse that he was hunting a strayed mustang. But his presence, although watched with a cold reserve by the few peons who were lounging near the gateway, provoked no challenge from them; and he made a circuit of the low adobe walls, with their barred windows and cinnamon-tiled roofs, without molestation—but equally without satisfaction. He felt he was a fool for imagining that he would see her in that way. He turned his horse towards the little Mission half a mile away. There he had once met the old padre, who spoke a picturesque but limited English; now he was only a few yards ahead of him, just turning into the church. The padre was pleased to see Don Ricardo; it was an unusual thing for the Americanos, he observed, to be up so early: for himself, he had his functions, of course. No, the ladies that the caballero had seen had not been to mass! They were Donna Maria and her daughter, going to San Gregorio. They comprised ALL the family at the rancho,—there were none others, unless the caballero, of a possibility, meant Donna Inez, a maiden aunt of sixty—an admirable woman, a saint on earth! He trusted that he would find his estray; there was no doubt a mark upon it, otherwise the plain was illimitable; there were many horses—the world was wide!
Dick turned his face homewards a little less adventurously, and it must be confessed, with a growing sense of his folly. The keen, dry morning air brushed away his fancies of the preceding night; the beautiful eyes that had lured him thither seemed to flicker and be blown out by its practical breath. He began to think remorsefully of his cousin, of his aunt,—of his treachery to that reserve which the little alien household had maintained towards their Spanish neighbors. He found Aunt Viney and Cecily at breakfast—Cecily, he thought, looking a trifle pale. Yet (or was it only his fancy?) she seemed curious about his morning ride. And he became more reticent.