. It was the greatest
pleasure of her life."

But it was true that during all the afternoon she had never once spoken
to Sebas-tiano. She had been as gay as a young bird, and the spirit of
the party, her laughter, her pretty mockeries and sauciness, had carried
all before them. Manuel had been reduced to hopeless slavery. Isabella
had looked on in secret reverential wonder. Jovita's old woman had
glanced aside again and again, nodding her head, and saying, sagely:
"Yes, she will always have it her own way--the little one. You are lucky
in having such a grandchild. She will never be a load." But throughout
it all Pepita had managed it that not one of her words had fallen
directly to Sebastiano. If he spoke to her, she gave her answer to the
one nearest to him. If he did not put an actual question to her, she
replied merely with a laugh or a piquant grimace or gesture, which
included all the rest. It was worse than coldness. To the others it was
perhaps not perceptible at all; only he who searched for her eyes, who
yearned and strove to meet them, knew that they never rested upon him
for an instant.

And then when he so daringly arranged that Jose should invite him to
return home with them, to what did it all come? He was lured to old
Jovita's side by the fact that at the beginning of the walk Pepita kept
near her, and no sooner had the old woman involved him in tiresome talk,
from which he could not escape, than the small figure flitted away and
ended the journey homeward under the wing of Jose, and accompanied by
Manuel and a certain gay little Carlos, who joked and laughed like a
child.

And when after they arrived, and the moon rose, and they sat under the
vines, though there was gayety and laughter, he knew, as before, that
in some mysterious manner he was excluded from it, though he seemed the
honored and distinguished guest. Carlos, who sat near some shrubs in
bloom, made a little wreath of white flowers, and as she played and
sang to her guitar, Pepita wore it on her head. Then Manuel, not to be
outdone, wove a garland of pink oleander, and she threw it about her
throat and sang on. Sebastiano forgot at last to speak, and could only
sit and look at her. He could see and hear nothing else. It was almost
the same thing with the rest, for that matter. She was somehow the
centre figure round which they all seemed to have gathered, as she sat
there playing, a night breeze sometimes stirring the soft ruffled hair
on