)
The little black head and the rose on top of it disappeared. Brace drew
himself up against the wall and waited. The time seemed interminable.
Impatiently looking up and down, he at last saw Dona Isabel at a
distance, quietly and unconcernedly moving among the roses, and
occasionally stooping as if to pick them. In an instant he was at her
side.
"Let me help you," he said.
She opened her little brownish palm,--
"Look!" In her hand were a few leaves of some herb. "It is for you."
Brace seized and kissed the hand.
"Is it some love-test?"
"It is for what you call a julep-cocktail," she replied gravely. "He
will remain in a glass with aguardiente; you shall drink him with a
straw. My sister has said that ever where the Americans go they expect
him to arrive."
"I prefer to take him straight," said Brace, laughing, as he nibbled a
limp leaf bruised by the hand of the young girl. "He's pleasanter, and,
on the whole, more wildly intoxicating this way! But what about your
duenna? and how comes this blessed privilege of seeing you alone?"
Dona Isabel lifted her black eyes suddenly to Brace.
"You do not comprehend, then? Is it not, then, the custom of the
Americans? Is it not, then, that there is no duenna in your country?"
"There are certainly no duennas in my country.
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