"A hat! a bonnet, anything!" he said. "Give me something quickly!"
She took from the table the gay hat in which Felisa had arrived, and placed it in his outstretched hand, but she did not look at him again. He almost snatched it from her. Was not Felisa waiting bareheaded down there by the river? He sprang to the ground and hastened across the trocha. After he had entered the grove, he buried his face among the flowers, which exhaled that faint, evanescent fragrance which already spoke to him of her. Agueda sighed and placed the silver-backed mirror upon the table. Had one asked her what she had been searching for in its honest depths, she could hardly have told. Perhaps she had been wondering whether with such aids to beauty as Felisa had, she would not be as attractive. Perhaps looking to see if she had grown less sweet, less lovable in these few short hours.
"Juana," she called. "Juana!" The old crone hobbled forth quickly from the kitchen at Agueda's sharp tone. It was new to her.
"Make this room tidy," ordered Agueda. Juana wondered at the harsh note in Agueda's voice. The girl herself was unconscious that she had spoken differently than she had been wont to do, but she was filled with a defiant feeling, a fear that now the others would not treat her with the respect which Don Beltran had always demanded of them. That new pain was accountable. At the sharp note in her voice, Juana had looked inquiringly, but Agueda raised a haughty head and passed along the veranda to her own room.
Felisa heard Beltran returning. Her quick ear noted every movement, from the hurried run across the potrero and the trocha to his pushing back with impatient hand the low-sweeping branches and his hasty footfall down the path. She wondered if this new blossoming in her heart were love? She had never felt so since those first early days of adolescence, when as a young girl her trust had been deceived, ensnared, entrapped, and left fluttering with wounded wings. Should she love him? Was it worth her while? Her first word was a complaint. Experience had taught her that complaisance is a girl's worst enemy.
"Why did you place those wires there, cousin?"
For answer Beltran came close and looked down upon her shining head. Suddenly he took her in his arms and kissed her. She struggled, for she was really somewhat indignant.