instepped feet encased in black slippers ornamented with large quaint silver buckles.
It was the Señora's birthday. She had risen earlier than usual prepared to receive the congratulations of her friends who, she knew, would be sure to call during the day in honor of the occasion. A few of them would be asked to remain and dine with her in the evening.
It was on a similar occasion that Chiquita had danced in the patio before her guests.
The innate vanity of the woman might have led one to suppose that she would let the years pass unnoticed, but not so. The old, time-honored custom of the country must be observed lest her friends might say: Señora Fernandez is already laying by for a ripe old age, the mere suggestion of which on the part of the world would have been enough to throw her into one of those uncontrollable fits of rage for which she was noted.
Artful, shrewd and scheming though she was, her susceptibility to flattery was her weak point, amounting almost to a mania. To be told that she still looked as young and handsome as in the days when the years justified the statement, was to win her immediate esteem. The lack of this servile attitude and cringing civility on Chiquita's part, together with the knowledge of her own superiority which she never hesitated to show when occasion required, had drawn down the Señora's enmity upon her. Whereas, an occasional soft word or smile of acquiescence—she demanded so little—would have smoothed her ruffled spirit and taken the edge off her tongue, the sharpest in Santa Fé.
It was not easy for the inveterate coquette and one time reigning belle to resign the position she had held so long and undisputed, especially to an alien—one whom the full blooded Spaniard inwardly despises, regards as of an inferior race.
How she hated the dark woman, envied the glances and flatteries and attentions which she always received wherever she went. It was said, that on Chiquita's return from school, Señora Fernandez suddenly grew cold and haughty toward the world, but finding that a proud exterior availed her little, she sulked and pouted for a time like a spoiled child, only to warm again to the world which she loved so passionately, which she felt slipping from her and without whose adulation she could not live.
Dios de mi vida! but it was terrible to grow old! Not since the death of her husband, Don Carlos, had she endured so bitter a pang. The fact that she had never had any children accounted perhaps for a certain harshness in her nature.
It was a busy day for the Señora. Besides the care of her guests, the preparing of freshly killed fowl and baking of cakes and tortillas, there was the garden which must be hung with lanterns where there would be the usual dancing and merrymaking during the evening. All this and much more the Señora must superintend, but she was equal to the task.
As she issued her orders to the retinue of servants that came and went, she carried on a lively, though interrupted, conversation with her sister, Señora Rosario Sanchez, and her niece, Dolores, who had come to assist her in the preparations.