“Why not?  I am pretty now:  she herself said it,” persisted the child.  “In these clothes, you know:  she herself said it.  The clothes of the son of Pedro you will never see more:  they are burned.”

“Burned?”

“Yes, burned,” replied Felipa composedly.  “I carried them out on the barren and burned them.  Drollo singed his paw.  They burned quite nicely.  But they are gone, and I am pretty now, and yet they did not take me!  What shall I do?”

“Take these colors and make me a picture,” I suggested.  Generally, this was a prized privilege, but to-day it did not attract:  she turned away, and a few moments after I saw her going down to the end of the plank walk, where she stood gazing wistfully toward the ocean.  There she stayed all day, going into camp with Drollo, and refusing to come to dinner in spite of old Dominga’s calls and beckonings.  At last the patient old grandmother went down herself to the end of the long plank walk where they were with some bread and venison on a plate.  Felipa ate but little, but Drollo, after waiting politely until she had finished, devoured everything that was left in his calmly hungry way, and then sat back on his haunches with one paw on the plate, as though for the sake of memory.  Drollo’s hunger was of the chronic kind:  it seemed impossible either to assuage it or to fill him.  There was a gaunt leanness about him which I am satisfied no amount of food could ever fatten.  I think he knew it too, and that accounted for his resignation.  At length, just before sunset, the boat returned, floating up the river with the tide, old Bartolo steering and managing the brown sails.  Felipa sprang up joyfully:  I thought she would spring into the boat in her eagerness.  What did she receive for her long vigil?  A short word or two:  that was all.  Christine and Edward had quarreled.

How do lovers quarrel ordinarily?  But I should not ask that, for these were no ordinary lovers:  they were decidedly extraordinary.

“You should not submit to her caprices so readily,” I said the next day while strolling on the barren with Edward. (He was not so much cast down, however, as he might have been.)

“I adore the very ground her foot touches, Kitty.”

“I know it.  But how will it end?”

“I will tell you:  some of these days I shall win her, and then—­she will adore me.”

Here Felipa came running after us, and Edward immediately challenged her to a race:  a game of romps began.  If Christine had been looking from her window, she might have thought he was not especially disconsolate over her absence; but she was not looking.  She was never looking out of anything or for anybody.  She was always serenely content where she was.  Edward and Felipa strayed off among the pine trees, and gradually I lost sight of them.  But as I sat sketching an hour afterward Edward came into view, carrying the child in his arms.  I hurried to meet them.