Several times she caught the eyes of Ana regarding her curiously. It was the first time she had ever seen Raquel surrounded by men and bandying compliments, and looking, for all her nunlike white and black, like a royal creature at a puppet show. And Ana had a sort of triumph in noting that the eyes of Doña Angela also wandered to her hostess in a sort of petulant amaze at the supremacy of her, when she chose to unbend and radiate graciousness in that manner. For Raquel jested and laughed at the pretty phrases of caballeros murmured in her ear. She refused a brooch of emerald for the Virgin in the chapel, in exchange for the jasmine in her hair. She promised two men to say a rosary for their aching hearts, and she allowed the older men to kiss her hands. One looking at her said:
"You are Mexico come to life to-night, señora. Always I have thought it. But to-night I see it with my own eyes. Mexico has always that glory of the opal fires at the heart."
Angela Bryton saw and heard, and her own childish appeal appeared all at once cheap and of tinsel. The pearls and brocades of the woman she hated seemed to scorch her flesh, and she felt the truth of the petulant words she had said to Rafael: that the pearls had been tossed to her with the indifference of a queen. The owner of the casket could afford to stand serene and gemless, with only the jasmine flower in her hair, and yet dominate.
A cold rage filled her as she realized what Raquel could mean to men if she cared. It would be as it was when they met first on the hill, always she would hold the middle of the road, if she was aroused to care. Up to that moment there had been a wild fancy of perhaps sailing away alone with the hastily gathered coin, and of stopping at no port for Rafael. She was half afraid of him and after all what could he do if she did elude him like that? But the sight of Raquel and her little court of admirers changed all that. The proud eyes should know all the humiliation one woman could cause another--all!
She looked for Rafael; at once she would tell him,--now, while the glory of the Mexican opal eclipsed the woman of the royal pearls! She was blind with anger to every other thing. But he had not yet appeared. He was dressing, and a gentleman came to claim her for a dance. The guitars were already sending harmonies through the open doors, and the people were gathering thick along the western corridors. The rest of the plaza and the inner court were deserted. Not even a pair of lovers strayed from the crowd as yet. Later, when the moon came up, they would gather courage, but the shadows of the corridors seemed eerie retreats at night to any but souls oblivious to the world.