“Bah! am I a fool?” She elevated her nose.
This conversation undoubtedly explains the staidness of her demeanor that day. Not that it was necessary to keep Billy at his distance. Leaving his painful modesty out of the question, in his ignorance of the Mexican peon folk he placed her in his imagination on the same plane as a white girl, and as the color of a skin cuts no figure in the calculations of the little god, providing that it be fitted smoothly over a pretty body, she found favor in his sight. At work both the next and the following days he kept always an eye open for the flash of her white garments in the doorway. When, with the earthen jar on her head, she went to draw water from the spring his glance followed the swaying rhythms of her figure. If not actually in love by the time Don Luis and Francesca put in their appearance next morning, Billy was at least living a tropical idyl, one not a whit less beautiful because its object departed far from his ideal in all but her physical perfection.
The visit had been skilfully timed to miss lunch, and Billy was already back at his work. Crossing the bench, Don Luis’s eye went instantly to the girl who had been drawn to the door by the sound of hoofbeats. But his expression gave no hint of his grim amusement. The keenest ear would have found it difficult to detect sarcasm in his remark.
“I see, señor, that you have added to your family.”
Also it need not be said that Francesca’s woman’s eye had summed at a glance the smooth oval face, rounded arms, shapely figure; yet their undeniable comeliness brought no pleasure to her expression. If Billy had overlooked Don Luis’s sarcasm it was impossible to miss her scorn.
“A capable housekeeper—if one may judge from her looks—and quite at home. You are to be congratulated, Mr. Thornton.”
Looking up in quick surprise, Billy noticed the absence of the sympathy that she had shown him during her last visit. Feeling the cold anger behind, and sadly puzzled, he was not sorry when, after a few minutes of strained talk, Don Luis asked to be shown the vein. Judging by his backward glance from the mouth of the tunnel, it would appear that he had coined the request to pave the way for that which happened the instant they disappeared. For, walking her beast over to the house, Francesca spoke to the girl.
“Thy name?”
“Carmelita, señorita.”
“Of what village?”