But you shall lif till another time," said Dona Rosita, with a mock courtesy, gliding with Joan away.
The "other time" came that evening when chocolate was served on the veranda, where Dona Rosita, mantilla-draped against the dry, clear, moonlit air, sat at the feet of Joan on the lowest step.

Demorest, uneasily observant of the influence of the giddy foreigner on his wife, and conscious of certain confidences between them from which he was excluded, leaned against a pillar of the porch in half abstracted resignation; Joan, under the tutelage of Rosita, lit a cigarette; Demorest gazed at her wonderingly, trying to recall, in her fuller and more animated face, some memory of the pale, refined profile of the Puritan girl he had first met in the Boston train, the faint aurora of whose cheek in that northern clime seemed to come and go with his words.
Becoming conscious at last of the eyes of Dona Rosita watching him from below, with an effort he recalled his duty as her host and gallantly reminded her that moonlight and the hour seemed expressly fitted for her promised love story.
"Do tell it," said Joan, "I don't mind hearing it again." "Then you know it already ?" said Demorest, surprised.
Joan took the cigarette from her lips, laughed complacently, and exchanged a familiar glance with Rosita.

"She told it me a year ago, when we first knew each other," she replied.

"Go on, dear," to Rosita.
Thus encouraged, Dona Rosita began, addressing herself first in Spanish to Demorest, who understood the language better than his wife, and lapsing into her characteristic English as she appealed to them both.
It was really very little to interest Don Ricardo--this story of a silly muchacha like herself and a strange caballero.

He would go to sleep while she was talking, and to-night he would say to his wife, "Mother of God! why have you brought here this chattering parrot who speaks but of one thing ?" But she would go on always like the windmill, whether there was grain to grind or no.