"As good as the hay from the old potrera, dear Heart. And cold? One would imagine that we possessed our own ice-machine."
The Señora looked at Don Gil questioningly. His face was serious. She smiled. These were virtues, then! The Señora did not know much about the English decoction.
"Be careful, Raquel. That aged lizard will fall into the teapot else; he might get a chill. Chills are fatal to lizards." Don Gil was smiling now.
Raquel closed the lid with a loud bang. The lizard scampered up the allemanda vine, where it hid behind one of the yellow velvet flowers.
"But you seem so absent in mind, Gil. What is it all about? You look so often up the broad camino. Do you expect any—any one—Gil?"
Don Gil dropped over his eyes those long and purling lashes which, since his adolescence, had been the pride and despair of every belle within the radius of twenty miles.
"You do expect some one, Gil; no welcome guest. That I can see. Oh! Gil. It is my un—it is Escobeda whom you expect."
Don Gil did not look up.
"I think it is quite likely that he will come," he said. "I may as well tell you, Raquel; the steamer arrived this morning. He must have waited there over a steamer." Had Silencio voiced his conviction, he would have added, "Escobeda's vengeance may be slow, but it is sure as well."
The Señora's face was colourless, her frightened eyes were raised anxiously to his. Her lips hardly formed the word that told him of her fear.