A bell tinkled above. Kate climbed the stone stairs. And there above her was Doña Carlota, in white muslin and with white shoes and stockings, her face looking curiously yellow and faded by contrast. Her soft brown hair was low over her ears, and she held out her thin brownish arms with queer effusiveness.
“So, you have come! And you have walked, walked all the way? Oh, imagine walking in so much sun and dust! Come, come in and rest.”
She took Kate’s hands and led her across the open terrace at the top of the stairs.
“It is beautiful here,” said Kate.
She stood on the terrace, looking out past the mango trees at the lake. A distant sailing canoe was going down the breeze, on the pallid, unreal water. Away across rose the bluish, grooved mountains, with the white speck of a village: far away in the morning it seemed, in another world, in another life, in another mode of time.
“What is that village?” Kate asked.
“That one? That one there? It is San Ildefonso,” said Doña Carlota, in her fluttering eagerness.
“But it is beautiful here!” Kate repeated.
“Hermoso—si! Si, bonito!” quavered the other woman uneasily, always answering in Spanish.
The house, reddish and yellow in colour, had two short wings towards the lake. The terrace, with green plants on the terrace wall, went round the three sides, the roof above supported by big square pillars that rose from the ground. Down below, the pillars made a sort of cloisters around the three sides, and in the little stone court was a pool of water. Beyond, the rather neglected formal garden with strong sun and deep mango-shade.