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 openly.”

“Ah, that is wrong,” said Dona Isabel meditatively, moving the point of her tiny slipper on the gravel.  “Then it is the young girl that shall come in the corridor and the married lady on the balcony?”

“Well, yes.”

“Good-by, ape!”

She ran swiftly down the avenue of palms to a small door at the back of the house, turned, blew a kiss over the edge of her fan to Brace, and disappeared.  He hesitated a moment or two, then quickly rescaling the wall, dropped into the lane outside, followed it to the gateway of the casa, and entered the patio as Dona Isabel decorously advanced from a darkened passage to the corridor.  Although the hour of siesta had passed, her sister, Miss Chubb, the Alcalde, and Mrs. Brimmer were still lounging here on sofas and hammocks.

It would have been difficult for a stranger at a first glance to discover the nationality of the ladies.  Mrs. Brimmer and her friend Miss Chubb had entirely succumbed to the extreme dishabille of the Spanish toilet—­not without a certain languid grace on the part of Mrs. Brimmer, whose easy contour lent itself to the stayless bodice; or a certain bashful, youthful naivete on the part of Miss Chubb, the rounded dazzling whiteness of whose neck and shoulders half pleased and half frightened her in her low, white, plain camisa—­under the lace mantilla.