"Make this room tidy," ordered Agueda. Juana wondered at the harsh note in Agueda's voice. The girl herself was unconscious that she had spoken differently than she had been wont to do, but she was filled with a defiant feeling, a fear that now the others would not treat her with the respect which Don Beltran had always demanded of them. That new pain was accountable. At the sharp note in her voice, Juana had looked inquiringly, but Agueda raised a haughty head and passed along the veranda to her own room.
Felisa heard Beltran returning. Her quick ear noted every movement, from the hurried run across the potrero and the trocha to his pushing back with impatient hand the low-sweeping branches and his hasty footfall down the path. She wondered if this new blossoming in her heart were love? She had never felt so since those first early days of adolescence, when as a young girl her trust had been deceived, ensnared, entrapped, and left fluttering with wounded wings. Should she love him? Was it worth her while? Her first word was a complaint. Experience had taught her that complaisance is a girl's worst enemy.
"Why did you place those wires there, cousin?"
For answer Beltran came close and looked down upon her shining head. Suddenly he took her in his arms and kissed her. She struggled, for she was really somewhat indignant.
"And may not cousins kiss?" asked Beltran. "Those wires were placed there to prevent the little child whom we—I—expected from falling into the river. You are scarce larger than the little child—whom we—I—pictured, but oh! how infinitely more sweet!"
He twisted one long brown finger in the ring of hair which strayed downward nearly to her eyes. Felisa withdrew her head with a quick motion. She was experiencing a mixture of feelings. She had come here to San Isidro with a purpose, and now, within two short hours of her arrival, she found that her purpose marched with her desires. Don Noé had said, "Felisa, do you remember your Cousin Beltran, your mother's nephew?"
"No, papa, how could I remember him? I never saw him. I have seldom heard of him."
"Ah, yes, I know," returned Don Noé, with the sudden awakening of the semi-centenarian to the fact that he is communing with a second generation. "Well, that wretched old grandfather of yours, old Balatrez, cut your mother off because she married me!"
"Had he seen the hat boxes?" asked Felisa, who had a humour of her own.