“Oh, but I assure you I’m in no sweet temper,” said she.  “Just now I’m tremendously angry.”

“Why?”

“It’s that stepmother—­Isabel.”

“So!  You’ve been quarreling again, eh?  Well, she’s the easiest woman in all Matanzas to quarrel with—­perhaps the only one who doesn’t see something good in me.  I’m afraid to talk to her for fear she’d convince me I’m wholly abominable.”

Rosa laughed, showing her fine, regular teeth—­O’Reilly thought he had never seen teeth so even and white.  “Yes, she is a difficult person.  If she dreamed that I see you as often as I do—­Well—­” Rosa lifted her eloquent hands and eyes heavenward.  “I suppose that’s why I enjoy doing it—­I so dearly love to spite her.”

“I see!” O’Reilly puckered his brows and nodded.  “But why, in that case, haven’t you seen me oftener?  We might just as well have made the good lady’s life totally unbearable.”

“Silly!  She knows nothing about it.”  With a flirtatious sigh Rosa added:  “That’s what robs the affair of its chief pleasure.  Since it does not bother her in the least, I think I will not allow you to come any more.”

After judicious consideration, O’Reilly pretended to agree.

“There’s no fun in wreaking a horrible revenge, when your enemy isn’t wise to it,” he acknowledged.  “Since it’s your idea to irritate your stepmother, perhaps it would annoy her more if I made love directly to her.”

Rosa tittered, and then inquired, naively, “Can you make love, senor?”

“Can I?  It’s the one ability an O’Reilly inherits.  Listen to this now.”  Reaching forth, he took Rosa’s fingers in his.  “Wait!” he cried as she resisted.  “Pretend that you’re Mrs. Varona, your own stepmother, and that this is her dimpled hand I’m holding.”

“Oh-h!” The girl allowed his grasp to remain.  “But Isabel’s hand isn’t dimpled:  it’s thin and bony.  I’ve felt it on my ears often enough.”

“Don’t interrupt,” he told her.  “Isabel, my little darling—­”

“‘Little’!  La!  La!  She’s as tall and ugly as a chimney.”

“Hush!  I’ve held my tongue as long as I can, but now it’s running away of its own accord, and I must tell you how mad I am about you.  The first time I saw you—­it was at the ball in the Spanish Club—­” Again Rosa drew away sharply, at which O’Reilly laid his other hand over the one in his palm, saying, quickly:  “You and your stepdaughter, Rosa.  Do you remember that first waltz of ours?  Sure, I thought I was in heaven, with you in my arms and your eyes shining into mine, and I told you so.”

“So you make the same pretty speeches to all women, eh?” the girl reproached him.

“Isabel, sweetheart, I lose my breath when I think of you; my lips pucker up for kisses—­”

“’Isabel’!” exclaimed a voice, and the lovers started guiltily apart.  They turned to find Esteban, Rosa’s twin brother, staring at them oddly.  “Isabel?” he repeated.  “What’s this?”