y! 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. But who has changed the
custom here?"

"Is it not true that in your country any married woman shall duenna
the young senorita?" continued Dona Isabel, without replying; "that any
caballero and senorita shall see each other in the patio, and not under
a balcony?--that they may speak with the lips, and not the fan?"

"Well--yes," said Brace.

"Then my brother has arranged it as so. He have much hear the Dona
Barbara Brimmer when she make talk of these things frequently, and he
is informed and impressed much. He will truly have that you will come
of the corridor, and not the garden, for me, and that I shall have no
duenna but the Dona Barbara. This does not make you happy, you American
idiot boy!"

It did not. The thought of carrying on a flirtation under the
fastidious Boston eye of Mrs. Brimmer, instead of under the discreet
and mercenarily averted orbs of Dona Ursula, did not commend itself
pleasantly to Brace.

"Oh, yes," he returned quickly. "We will go into the corridor, in the
fashion of my country"--

"Yes," said Dona Isabel dubiously.

"AFTER we have walked in the garden in the fashion of YOURS. That's only
fair, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Dona Isabel gravely; "that's what the Comandante will call
'internation-al courtesy.'"

The young man slipped his arm around the young diplomatist's waist, and
they walked on in decorous silence under the orange-trees.

"It seems to me," said Brace presently, "that Mrs. Brimmer has a good
deal to say up your way?"

"Ah, yes; but what will you? It is my brother who has love for her."

"But," said Brace, stopping suddenly, "doesn't he know that she has a
husband living?"

Dona Isabel lifted her lashes in childlike wonder.

"Always! you idiot American boy. That is why. Ah, Mother of God! my
brother is discreet. He is not a maniac, like you, to come after a silly
muchacha like me."

The response which Brace saw fit to make to this statement elicited a
sharp tap upon the knuckles from Dona Isabel.

"Tell to me," she said suddenly, "is not that a custom of your country?"

"What? THAT?"

"No, insensate. To attend a married senora?"

"Not