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But the little waif—whose soft curls had suggested the pet name—was not yet to slumber; for at that moment Doña Feliz appeared. Pedro noticed as she crossed the courtyard that she was extremely pale. Some of the women rushed toward her with voluble accounts of the beauty of the child and the fineness of its garments. She smiled wearily, and turned from them to look at the foundling. A flush spread over her face as she examined it, not reddening but deepening its clear olive tint. She looked at Rafael searchingly, at Pedro questioningly. He muttered over his thrice-told tale. “Was there no word, no paper?” she said, but waited for no answer. “This is no plebeian child, Rafael. What shall we do with it? Doña Isabel is not here, perhaps will not be here for years!”

There was a buzz of astonishment, for this was the first intimation of Doña Isabel’s intended length of absence. In the midst of it Pedro had taken the sleeping child from Refugio’s somewhat reluctant arm, and wrapping it in a scarf taken from his niece’s shoulders, had laid it on the sheepskin in the alcove in which he usually slept. This tacit appropriation perhaps settled the fate of the infant; still Doña Feliz looked at her son uneasily, and he rubbed his hands in perplexity. “Of all the days in the year for a babe like this to be left here,” he said, “when, the Saints willing, I am to have one of my own! No, no, mother, Rita would never consent.”