She was pale,
but exquisitely beautiful, and even her hands and feet
expressed the idea of expectation. Antonia had a piece of
needlework in her hand. She affected the calmness she did
not feel, for her heart was trembling for the tender little
heart beating with so much love and anxiety beside her.
But Isabel's divination, however arrived at, was not at fault.
In a few moments Don Luis lightly leaped the hedge, and
without a moment's hesitation sought the shadow of the fig-
tree. As he approached, Antonia looked at him with a new
interest. It was not only that he loved Isabel, but that
Isabel loved him. She had given him sympathy before, now she
gave him a sister's affection.
"How handsome he is!" she thought. "How gallant he looks in
his velvet and silver and embroidered jacket! And how eager
are his steps! And how joyful his face! He is the kind of
Romeo that Shakespeare dreamed about! Isabel is really an
angel to him. He would really die for her. What has this
Spanish knight of the sixteenth century to do in Texas in the
nineteenth century?"
He answered her mental question in his own charming way. He
was so happy, so radiantly happy, so persuasive, so
compelling, that Antonia granted him, without a word, the
favor his eyes asked for. And the lovers hardly heard the
excuse she made; they understood nothing of it, only that she
would be reading in the myrtle walk for one hour, and, by so
doing, would protect them from intrusion.
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