Quentin dismounted, walked up to the group, gave his hand to Rafaela, and greeted the others with a bow. Undoubtedly Rafaela had informed her friends who the horseman was, for Quentin noticed that several of the girls looked at him curiously.
He took the cake that Remedios gave him, and a glass of wine.
“Won’t you sit down?” Rafaela asked him.
“Thank you, no. I’m going for a ride along the mountain.”
As he drew near Rafaela, Quentin noticed the look of hatred that one of the young men present cast at him.
“He’s a rival,” he thought.
From that instant, the two boys were consumed with hatred for each other. The young man was tall, blond, with a certain rusticity about him in spite of his elegant clothes. Quentin heard them call him Juan de Dios. The youth spoke in a rather uncultured manner, converting his s’s into z’s, his r’s into l’s, and vice versa. He gazed fixedly at Rafaela, and from time to time said to her:
“Why don’t you drink a little something?”
Rafaela thanked him with a smile. Among the girls were Rafaela’s two cousins; the elder, María de los Angeles, had a nose like a parrot, green pop-eyes, and a salient under lip; Transito, the younger, was better looking, but her expression, which was half haughty and half indifferent, did not captivate one’s sympathies. Like her sister, she had green eyes, and thin lips with a strange curve to them that gave her a cruel expression.
Transito questioned Quentin in a bantering and sarcastic tone; he replied to her pleasantly, with feigned modesty, and in purposely broken Spanish. Presently he announced his intention of going.