"Advice?" echoed Padre Antonio, realizing the moment of his arrival to be most opportune. "That's just what I have come to give you, my child—advice!"
"What! You, too, Padre?" she exclaimed petulantly, looking at him inquiringly. "Dios! what have I done that everybody comes to give me advice when I have so many other things to think of?"
"Chiquita," slowly began Padre Antonio, laying his hand gently on her own, "I have always known you to be wiser than most women, the result no doubt, of your early life and training in the wilds where people must live by their wits for self-preservation if for nothing else." He paused that he might the better collect his thoughts. She guessed what was coming and began toying with her fan, an arch smile playing about her delicate, sensitive mouth as she regarded him out of the corners of her large dark eyes.
"Chiquita," he continued, "I do not like your extravagance. Have a care, child, lest you become addicted to vanity."
"Again, just what the Señora said! Am I so vain as all that, Padre mio, that you should be obliged to remind me of it?"
"Then why this continual display?" he asked pointedly. "You never used to show such consideration for your admirers." She felt that it would be not only foolish, but worse than useless to attempt to fence about the truth with him.
"Ah, Padre mio," she sighed softly, blushing and laying her hand lightly on his shoulder and looking up into his face with deep lustrous eyes that softened with her words, "you—you forget—that I have never been in love before."
"In love!" echoed Padre Antonio in turn. "Ah! I knew it was that," and into his eyes there came an expression of tenderness and a far-away look as though the word recalled memories of other days. Memories which music or the glories of the sunset, or the cooing of the wood-dove at eventide might awaken within the soul. The sunlight played along the path at their feet. The breeze wafted the fragrance of the roses about them and a linnet, perched on the swaying branch of a tree overhead, gave voice to his song, singing of the joy of life. Again he sighed, and Chiquita looking up quickly, saw in his eyes that which she had never suspected.
"Padre mio," she said at length, lowering her eyes and slowly opening and shutting her fan, "have—have you ever been in love?"
"My child!" he cried with a start, suddenly recollecting where he was. "You forget what I am! What are you thinking of?"