Nevertheless, this tranquillity, after a few moments, was singularly disturbed.  There was no breeze stirring, and yet the long fronds of a large fan palm, that stood near the breach in the wall, began to move gently from right to left, like the arms of some graceful semaphore, and then as suddenly stopped.  Almost at the same moment a white curtain, listlessly hanging from a canopied balcony of the Alcalde’s house, began to exhibit a like rhythmical and regular agitation.  Then everything was motionless again; an interval of perfect peace settled upon the garden.  It was broken by the apparition of Brace under the balcony, and the black-veiled and flowered head of Dona Isabel from the curtain above.

“Crazy boy!”

“Senorita!”

“Hush!  I am coming down!”

“You?  But Dona Ursula!”

“There is no more Dona Ursula!”

“Well—­your duenna, whoever she is!”

“There is no duenna!”

“What?”

“Hush up your tongue, idiot boy!” (this in English.)

The little black head and the rose on top of it disappeared.  Brace drew himself up against the wall and waited.  The time seemed interminable.  Impatiently looking up and down, he at last saw Dona Isabel at a distance, quietly and unconcernedly moving among the roses, and occasionally stooping as if to pick them.  In an instant he was at her side.

“Let me help you,” he said.

She opened her little brownish palm,—­

“Look!” In her hand were a few leaves of some herb.  “It is for you.”

Brace seized and kissed the hand.

“Is it some love-test?”

“It is for what you call a julep-cocktail,” she replied gravely.  “He will remain in a glass with aguardiente; you shall drink him with a straw.  My sister has said that ever where the Americans go they expect him to arrive.”

“I prefer to take him straight,” said Brace, laughing, as he nibbled a limp leaf bruised by the hand of the young girl.  “He’s pleasanter, and, on the whole, more wildly intoxicating this way!  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!”