“Come right in, caballero,” she said to him.  “You surely need something after this escapade of yours.  You are sopping wet, both of you....  Poor boys!  Just look at them!...  Beppa!...  Auntie!  But do come in, sir!”

And she fairly pushed Rafael forward with a sort of maternal authoritativeness, much as a kindly woman might take her child in hand after he has done some naughty prank of which she is secretly proud.

The rooms were in disorder.  Clothes everywhere and heaps of rustic furniture that contrasted with the other pieces arranged along the walls!  The household belongings of the gardener had been brought upstairs as soon as the flood started.  An old farmer, his wife—­who was beside herself with fear—­and several children, who were slinking in the corners, had taken refuge in the upper story with the ladies, as soon as the water began seeping into their humble home.

Rafael entered the dining-room, and there sat dona Pepita, poor old woman, heaped in an armchair, the wrinkles of her features moistened with tears and her two hands clutching a rosary.  Cupido was trying vainly to cheer her with jokes about the inundation.

“Look, auntie!  This gentleman is the son of your friend, dona Bernarda.  He came over here in a boat to help us out.  It was very nice of him, wasn’t it?”

The old woman seemed quite to have lost her mind from terror.  She looked vacantly at the new arrivals, as if they had been there all their lives.  At last she seemed to realize what they were saying.

“Why, it’s Rafael!” she exclaimed in surprise.  “Rafaelito....  And you came to see us in such weather!  Suppose you get drowned?  What will your mother say?...  Lord, how crazy of you!  Lord!”

But it was not madness, and even if it were, it was very sweet of him!  That, at least, was what Rafael seemed to read in those clear, luminous eyes of the golden sparkles that caressed him with their velvety touch every time he dared to look at them.  Leonora was staring at him:  studying him in the lamplight, as if trying to understand the difference between the man in front of her and the boy she had met on her walk to the Hermitage.

Dona Pepa’s spirits rallied now that men were in the house; and with a supreme effort of will, the old lady decided to leave her armchair for a look at the flood, which had stopped rising, if, indeed, it were not actually receding.

“How much water, oh Lord our God!...  How many terrible things we’ll learn of tomorrow!  This must be a punishment from Heaven ... a warning to us to think of our many sins.”

Leonora meanwhile was bustling busily about, hurrying the refreshments.  Those gentlemen couldn’t be left like that—­she kept cautioning to her maid and the peasant woman.  Just imagine, with their clothes wet through!  How tired they must be after that all night struggle!  Poor fellows!  It was enough just to look at them!  And she set biscuits on the table, cakes, a bottle of rum—­everything, including a box of Russian cigarettes with gilded tips—­to the shocked surprise of the gardener’s wife.