Agueda saw them as they crossed the hot, white trocha. She saw them as they entered the grove.
"And that is the little child," she said aloud, "the little child." Then, with a sudden painful tightening at the heart, "I wonder if he knew." So quickly does the appearance of deceit excite distrust which has no foundation to build upon.
Beltran had known no more certainly than Agueda herself the age of this unknown cousin. He was guiltless of all premeditation, but to say that he was not conscious of an unmistakable joy when he found this charming young girl at the landing, and knew that she would live under the same roof with him for an indefinite period, would be to say that which is not true. Beltran was a victim of circumstances. He had not desired a change. He had not asked for it, yet when it came he accepted it, welcomed it perhaps. Had the choice between the known and the imagined been given him, he would have sought nothing better than his, until now, happy environment. "It is fate," thought Beltran.
When the cousins reached the river, Beltran parted the branches for Felisa, and she slipped out of the white heat into a soft-toned viridescence of shade. A path ran downward to the river shore. It was cut parallel with the water's flow. The path was overshadowed by thick branches. Mangoes, mamey trees, and mahoganies were there. The tall palm crowned all in its stately way. The young palms spread and pushed fan-like across the path, in intimate relation now with human kind. The time would come when no one would be able to lay a finger tip upon their stiff and glossy sprays, when their lofty tufts would look down from a vantage point of eighty or a hundred feet upon the heads of succeeding generations.
Felisa ran down the sloping path and seated herself, all fluff and laces, upon the slope of the bank. She sank into a bed of dry leaves, through which the fresh green of new-born plants was springing.
"Not there, not there!" cried Beltran, sharply. "You never know what is underneath those foot-deep leaves. Come down here, little cousin. I have a bench at the washing-stone."
They descended still lower. Her hand was still in the one by which he had raised her from the bank.
"You have closed the bench quite off from the river, cousin, with those hateful wires. I cannot get at the water or even at the broad stone there." Felisa spoke petulantly.
Beltran gazed down into the pretty face. The eyes, though not large, held the dancing light of youth. The upturned little nose and the broad mouth would not serve to make a handsome older woman, but the red lips pouted over white and even teeth, a rose flush tinted the ear and cheek, colourless curly tendrils escaped from under the large hat.