"Don't you think you've made spectacle enough of yourself?" asked Felisa, and with this parting fling she flew from her father's presence, and fell almost into the arms of Don Beltran, chance having thus favoured him. He held her close for a moment before he released her. She was pink and panting from these two contrasting experiences.
"He is often like that." She spoke fast to cover her embarrassment. "Did you ever know him before, cousin? If you did, I wonder that you asked us here."
Beltran smiled. He did not say that the visit had been self-proposed on Don Noé's part. His smile contracted somewhat as a heavy walking-shoe flew out through the open doorway and knocked the panama from his head. As Beltran stooped and recovered the hat, Felisa glanced at him shamefacedly. She noticed the wet rings of hair, streaked faintly with early grey, which the panama had pressed close to his forehead.
"I remember hearing that Uncle Noé was a young man with a temper," he said. "The family called it moods." He recalled this word from the vanishing point of the dim vista which memory flashed back to him at the moment. As Beltran spoke he glanced apprehensively at the open square in the palm-board exterior of the casa.
"Let us run away," he said, smiling down at the girl.
"Until he is sane again," agreed Felisa. She plunged into her room and caught up the discarded shoes; then springing from veranda to the short turf below, she ran with Beltran gaily toward the river. A bottle of ink shot out through the opening, and broke upon the place where they had stood.
"He is a lunatic at times," said Felisa, with a heightened colour. There was a drop upon her eyelash which Beltran suddenly wished that he dared have the courage to kiss away.
"I shall hurt my feet," she said, stopping suddenly. She dropped the shoes upon the ground, thrust her feet into them, and started again to run, her hand in Beltran's. The sun was scorching.
He took his broad panama from his head and placed it upon hers. It fell to her pretty pink ears.
She laughed, his laughter chimed with hers, and thus, like two happy children, they disappeared within the grove which fringed the river bank.