第22章

Demorest's dream of a few days' conjugal seclusion and confidences with his wife was quickly dispelled by that lady."I came down with Rosita Pico, whose father, you know, once owned this property," she said."She's gone on to her cousins at Los Osos Rancho to-night, but comes here to-morrow for a visit.She knows the place well; in fact, she once had a romantic love affair here.

But she is very entertaining.It will be a little change for us,"she added, naively.

Demorest kept back a sigh, without changing his gentle smile."I'm glad for your sake, dear.But is she not a little flighty and inclined to flirt a good deal? I think I've heard so.""She's a young girl who has been severely tried, Richard, and perhaps is not to blame for endeavoring to forget it in such distraction as she can find," said Mrs.Demorest, with a slight return of her old manner."I can understand her feelings perfectly." She looked pointedly at her husband as she spoke, it being one of her late habits to openly refer to their ante-nuptial acquaintance as a natural reaction from the martyrdom of her first marriage, with a quiet indifference that seemed almost an indelicacy.But her husband only said: "As you like, dear,"vaguely remembering Dona Rosita as the alleged heroine of a forgotten romance with some earlier American adventurer who had disappeared, and trying vainly to reconcile his wife's sentimental description of her with his own recollection of the buxom, pretty, laughing, but dangerous-eyed Spanish girl he had, however, seen but once.

She arrived the next day, flying into a protracted embrace of Joan, which included a smiling recognition of Demorest with an unoccupied blue eye, and a shake of her fan over his wife's shoulder.Then she drew back and seemed to take in the whole veranda and garden in another long caress of her eyes."Ah-yess! I have recog-nized it, mooch.It es ze same.Of no change--not even of a leetle.No, she ess always--esso." She stopped, looked unutterable things at Joan, pressed her fan below a spray of roses on her full bodice as if to indicate some thrilling memory beneath it, shook her head again, suddenly caught sight of Demorest's serious face, said: "Ah, that brigand of our husband laughs himself at me," and then herself broke into a charming ripple of laughter.

"But I was not laughing, Dona Rosita," said Demorest, smiling sadly, however, in spite of himself.

She made a little grimace, and then raised her elbows, slightly lifting her shoulders."As it shall please you, Senor.But he is gone--thees passion.Yess--what you shall call thees sentiment of lof--zo--as he came!" She threw her fingers in the air as if to illustrate the volatile and transitory passage of her affections, and then turned again to Joan with her back towards Demorest.

"Do please go on--Dona Rosita," said he, "I never heard the real story.If there is any romance about my house, I'd like to know it," he added with a faint sigh.

Dona Rosita wheeled upon him with an inquiring little look."Ah, you have the sentiment, and YOU," she continued, taking Joan by the arms, "YOU have not.Eet ess good so.When a--the wife," she continued boldly, hazarding an extended English abstraction, "he has the sentimente and the hoosband he has nothing, eet is not good--for a-him--ze wife," she concluded triumphantly.

"But I have great appreciation and I am dying to hear it," said Demorest, trying to laugh.

"Well, poor one, you look so.But you shall lif till another time," said Dona Rosita, with a mock courtesy, gliding with Joan away.

The "other time" came that evening when chocolate was served on the veranda, where Dona Rosita, mantilla-draped against the dry, clear, moonlit air, sat at the feet of Joan on the lowest step.Demorest, uneasily observant of the influence of the giddy foreigner on his wife, and conscious of certain confidences between them from which he was excluded, leaned against a pillar of the porch in half abstracted resignation; Joan, under the tutelage of Rosita, lit a cigarette; Demorest gazed at her wonderingly, trying to recall, in her fuller and more animated face, some memory of the pale, refined profile of the Puritan girl he had first met in the Boston train, the faint aurora of whose cheek in that northern clime seemed to come and go with his words.Becoming conscious at last of the eyes of Dona Rosita watching him from below, with an effort he recalled his duty as her host and gallantly reminded her that moonlight and the hour seemed expressly fitted for her promised love story.

"Do tell it," said Joan, "I don't mind hearing it again.""Then you know it already?" said Demorest, surprised.

Joan took the cigarette from her lips, laughed complacently, and exchanged a familiar glance with Rosita."She told it me a year ago, when we first knew each other," she replied."Go on, dear,"to Rosita.

Thus encouraged, Dona Rosita began, addressing herself first in Spanish to Demorest, who understood the language better than his wife, and lapsing into her characteristic English as she appealed to them both.It was really very little to interest Don Ricardo--this story of a silly muchacha like herself and a strange caballero.He would go to sleep while she was talking, and to-night he would say to his wife, "Mother of God! why have you brought here this chattering parrot who speaks but of one thing?"But she would go on always like the windmill, whether there was grain to grind or no."It was four years ago.Ah! Don Ricardo did not remember the country then--it was when the first Americans came--now it is different.Then there were no coaches--in truth one travelled very little, and always on horseback, only to see one's neighbors.And suddenly, as if in one day, it was changed;there were strange men on the roads, and one was frightened, and one shut the gates of the pateo and drove the horses into the corral.One did not know much of the Americans then--for why?