to say If you watch the occasion right." 
--Spanish Ballad. 
In the morning Isabel took breakfast with her sister. This was always a pleasant event to Antonia. She petted Isabel, she waited upon her, sweetened her chocolate, spread her cakes with honey, and listened to all her complaints of Tia Rachela. Isabel came gliding in when Antonia was about half way through the meal. Her scarlet petticoat was gorgeous, her bodice white as snow, her hair glossy as a bird's wing, but her lips drooped and trembled, and there was the shadow of tears in her eyes. Antonia kissed their white fringed lids, held the little form close in her arms, and fluttered about in that motherly way which Isabel had learned to demand and enjoy.
"What has grieved you this morning, little dove?"
"It is Tia Rachela, as usual. The cross old woman! She is going to tell mi madre something. Antonia, you must make her keep her tongue between her teeth. I promised her to confess to Fray Ignatius, and she said I must also tell mi madre. I vowed to say twenty Hail Marias and ten Glorias, and she said 'I ought to go back to the convent.'"
"But what dreadful thing have you been doing, Iza?"
Iza blushed and looked into her chocolate cup, as she answered slowly: "I gave--a--flower--away. Only a suchil flower, Antonia, that--I-wore--at--my--breast--last--night."
"Whom did you give it to, Iza?"
Iza hesitated, moved her chair close to Antonia, and then hid her face on her sister's breast.
"But this is serious, darling. Surely you did not give it to Senor Houston?"
"Could you think I was so silly? When madre was talking to him last night, and when I was singing my pretty serenade, he heard nothing at all. He was thinking his own thoughts."
"Not to Senor Houston? Who then? Tell me, Iza."
"To--Don Luis."
"Don Luis! But he is not here. He went to the Colorado."
"How stupid are you, Antonia! In New York they did not teach you to put this and that together. As soon as I saw Senor Houston, I said to myself: 'Don Luis was going to him; very likely they have met each other on the road; very likely Don Luis is back in San Antonio. He would not want to go away without bidding me good-by,' and, of course, I was right."
"But when did you see him last night? You never left the room."
"So many things are possible. My heart said to me when the talk was going on, 'Don Luis is waiting under the oleanders,' and I walked on to the balcony and there he was, and he looked so sad, and I dropped my suchil flower to him; and Rachela saw me, for I think she has a million eyes,--and that is the whole matter."
"But why did not Don Luis come in?"
"Mi madre forbade me to speak to him. That is the fault of the Valdez's."
"Then you disobeyed mi madre, and you know what Fray Ignatius and the Sisters have taught you about the 

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