"Of course, you would not sell it him?"
The señora shook her head. "It is not mine," she said. "It belongs to the Anasonas who are dead. One of them built it four hundred years ago, and one of them has lived here always, until my husband, Colonel of Cazadores, died in Cuba. Now I live alone, and remember, until by and by my nephew comes here after me. The past is all we have in Spain, but one feels that, after all, it may be worth more than the present—when one goes to Las Palmas."
Then a maid brought in a basket of grapes and a little wine, and it was some time later when the señora turned to Muriel.
"It seems that Jacinta is not coming in," she said. "Perhaps she would sooner see you alone in the patio. I do not know. Jacinta does not care about the conventions. She does what pleases her, and it is also very often the right thing. One descends from the veranda outside that window."
Muriel smiled as she went out, for she was acquainted with Jacinta's habits, and was beginning to comprehend the customs of the land she lived in, where time is not considered, and it is always drowsy afternoon. Then, though she was not an imaginative person, she trod softly as she went down the steps to the patio, for the influence of the place laid hold on her. The little white town lay silent under the cloudless heavens, and had there been any movement of busy life there, which very seldom happened, the high white walls of the garden would have shut out the sound. The house was also built round the patio in a hollow square, and interposed a double barrier between the outer world and that space of flowers.
Over it hung bronze-railed balconies, and quaint verandas with old carved pillars and rich trellises smothered in purple bougainvilla, while there were oleanders and heavy scented heliotrope in the little square below. A fountain twinkled in the midst of it, and fat goldfish from Palma swam slowly round its marble basin; but all was old, artistic, ill cared for, and steeped in a silence which seemed filled with the reminiscences of bygone years. Even Jacinta, who lay in a big cane chair near the fountain, appeared in keeping with the atmosphere of the place, for she was dressed in gauzy Castilian black, which added a suggestion of old-fashioned stateliness to her somewhat slender figure, and an ebony fan of a kind not made nowadays lay across an open book she had apparently been reading. She looked up with a little smile when she saw Muriel, and languidly pointed to the canvas lounge beside her.
"It's comfortable, and I think it's strong," she said. "Any way, the señora regularly goes to sleep in it. I brought the lounges with me, because they don't have such things in Spain. I shall probably leave them here, and if they break down with the señora it is quite certain nobody will ever think of mending them. One folds one's hands and says that it doesn't matter at Laguna. You will begin to understand it if you stay here."
Muriel laughed. "It's often a little hard to tell what you mean," she said. "You have been reading?"
"Mr. Prescott's history of the Spanish occupation of Mexico—you will, no doubt, be astonished at that?"
"I am. Still, I have read it, too."