Felisa's clothes, that most important factor in a man's first attraction toward a woman, were new and strange, and of a fashion that Beltran knew must be a symptom of modernity. He was utterly unconscious that a certain fascination lay in those wonderful great figures of colour sprawling over a gauzy ground of white. He would have denied that the ribbon knot at the waist, and its counterpart upon the left shoulder, had any particular charm for him, or that the delicate aroma of the lavender of an old-fashioned bureau, which emanated from those filmy ruffles with every motion of the restless little body, had anything to do with his being so drawn toward her.
Felisa seated herself and stretched out her feet, encased in a black silk mystery of open work and embroidery. He knelt and tied the silken laces. When he had finished this absorbing task he bent suddenly lower and pressed his lips to the instep above. Felisa withdrew it quickly, blushing. She knew nothing of such vigourous love-making as this. The northern birds were more wary.
"My hat," she said, "please get me one."
Beltran turned and ran up the path.
"I did not dream that I should like him so much," said Felisa softly, as she gazed after him.
Beltran ran swiftly to the casa and bounded up on to the veranda. Felisa's door reached, he hesitated. Agueda stood within the room, holding a hand-glass before her face. She was gazing at her reflection. At the well-known step she started. What hopes arose within her breast! He was coming back, the first moment that he was free, to tell her that she must not mind his attentions to his cousin, that they were necessary. She would meet him with a smile, she would convince him that that hateful jealousy, which had been tearing at her vitals for the past hour or two, had no part within her being. Ah! after all her suspicion of him, she was still his first thought! She started and dropped the glass. She turned toward him, a smile of welcome parting her lips.
Beltran hardly looked at Agueda.
"A hat! a bonnet, anything!" he said. "Give me something quickly!"
She took from the table the gay hat in which Felisa had arrived, and placed it in his outstretched hand, but she did not look at him again. He almost snatched it from her. Was not Felisa waiting bareheaded down there by the river? He sprang to the ground and hastened across the trocha. After he had entered the grove, he buried his face among the flowers, which exhaled that faint, evanescent fragrance which already spoke to him of her. Agueda sighed and placed the silver-backed mirror upon the table. Had one asked her what she had been searching for in its honest depths, she could hardly have told. Perhaps she had been wondering whether with such aids to beauty as Felisa had, she would not be as attractive. Perhaps looking to see if she had grown less sweet, less lovable in these few short hours.
"Juana," she called. "Juana!" The old crone hobbled forth quickly from the kitchen at Agueda's sharp tone. It was new to her.