Agueda saw all the plans which they had made together for the coming of the little child carried out by Beltran alone. She could not accompany Don Beltran and his cousin upon their different expeditions; she could not go as an equal, she would not go as an inferior. Besides which, there was never any question as to her joining them. The bull rides, the search for mamey apples, the gathering of the aguacate pears, all of which she had suggested, were taken part in by two only; so was the lingering upon the river, until Agueda shuddered to think of the miasmata which arise after nightfall and envelop the unwary in their unseen though no less deadly clutches. The walks in the moonlight, ending in a lingering beneath the old mahogany tree for a few last confidences before the return to the home-light of the casa, left no place for a third member, because of the close intimacy which naturally was part and parcel of the whole.
All had come about as Agueda had planned, with the exception that she herself was missing from plain, hill, and river. She had heard Beltran say: "Yes, I will take you down to the potrero, little girl, to gather the aguacates, but you must not approach the bushes, for the thorns would sting your tender hands." Agueda recalled the day when she had suggested this as one of the cautious pleasures open to the little thing for whom they two were looking; but she, Agueda, who was to have been the central figure, she, the one to whose forethought had been entrusted the planning and carrying out of these small amusements, was excluded. As the days passed by, Beltran and Agueda seldom met, except in the presence of others. She addressed him now in the third person, as "If the Don Beltran allow," or "If the Don Beltran wishes." When by chance the two stumbled upon one another, neither could get out of the way quickly enough.
It was on a day when she was forced to speak to him as to the disposition of some furniture, that her utter dejection and spiritless tone appealed to him. As he glanced at her, he noticed for the first time how large her eyes were, what hollows showed beneath them, how shrunken and thin was her cheek.
"What is it, Agueda? You treat me as a culprit."