hought I
could put down, coherently and cohesively, what happened. Happened is
a palely inadequate word;--burst,--exploded--erupted, would be
better!

It worked like a charm. They got away. I leaned from Lupe's balcony
in the fragrant dusk and listened to their footfalls dying away. The
C.E., shrouded to his eyes, looked up and whispered that "Emily's"
_charro_ trousers had nearly ruined everything at the last moment;
he had needed vaseline and a shoehorn and a special supplication to
St. James to get them on. We giggled like sixteen-year-olds. The
C.E. said--

"Lettice, Lettice, let down your golden hair,
That I may climb by a golden stair!"

I was so pleased with him for remembering his fairy-tales. I was so
pleased with him and so fond of him and so happy over my _novios_
that I couldn't keep my beautiful plan a secret any longer. I told
him what I had decided about Dolores Tristeza.

My dear! I wish you could have heard him! He was another person
entirely. He said it was the maddest, wildest, most sickly
sentimental, impractical thing he'd ever heard! He raved on and on,
always coming back to the point of her clouded parentage. I told him
he was perfectly mid-Victorian,--that any one living in the present
century knows that there are no illegitimate _children_--just
illegitimate fathers and mothers! But it never budged him. He was,
for the first time, a most uncivil engineer. "Besides," I said,
"beauty and wit is the love child's portion!"

It must have been funny, really, raging at each other in whispers. He
began to burble about heredity and I told him I was planning an
environment that would bleach out the heredity of the Piper Family,
and he said that it couldn't be done, and I said that he was a
pagan-suckled-in-a-creed-outworn, and just then the train
whistled--the signal for what was to have been our melting moment,
and we were both so mad we were fairly jibbering! And at that very
instant old Cristina came running to tell us to fly at once, as Don
Diego had decided to have Emilio arrested!

Before we could spread a wing, a little guard of opera bouffe
soldiers was rounding the corner. I just whispered--"Stick! They'd
stop them at Silao!" when they were upon him. He was a brick, I must
admit. He just hitched the _serape_ higher and pulled the _s