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.And look—they are even decorating ME."It was true; they had thrown a half dozen strings of shells on Hurlstone's unresisting shoulders, and, unheeding the few words he laughingly addressed them in their own dialect, they ran off a few paces, and remained standing, as if gravely contemplating their work.Suddenly, with a little outcry of terror, they turned, fled wildly past them, and disappeared in the bushes.Miss Keene and Hurlstone rose at the same moment, but the young girl, taking a step forward, suddenly staggered, and was obliged to clasp one of the arms of the cross to keep herself from falling.Hurlstone sprang to her side."Are you ill?" he asked hurriedly."You are quite white.What is the matter?"A smile crossed her colorless face."I am certainly very giddy; everything seems to tremble.""Perhaps it is the flowers," he said anxiously."Their heavy perfume in this close air affects you.Throw them away, for Heaven's sake!"But she clutched them tighter to her heart as she leaned for a moment, pale yet smiling, against the cross."No, no!" she said earnestly; "it was not that.But the children were frightened, and their alarm terrified me.There, it is over now."She let him help her to her seat again as he glanced hurriedly around him.It must have been sympathy with her, for he was conscious of a slight vertigo himself.The air was very close and still.Even the pleasant murmur of the waves had ceased."How very low the tide is!" said Eleanor Keene, resting her elbow on her knees and her round chin upon her hand."I wonder if that could have frightened those dear little midgets?" The tide, in fact, had left the shore quite bare and muddy for nearly a quarter of a mile to seaward.Hurlstone arose, with grave eyes, but a voice that was unchanged."Suppose we inquire? Lean on my arm, and we'll go up the hill towards the Mission garden.Bring your flowers with you."The color had quite returned to her cheek as she leant on his proffered arm.Yet perhaps she was really weaker than she knew, for he felt the soft pressure of her hand and the gentle abandonment of her figure against his own as they moved on.But for some preoccupying thought, he might have yielded more completely to the pleasure of that innocent contact and have drawn her closer towards him; yet they moved steadily on, he contenting himself from time to time with a hurried glance at the downcast fringes of the eyes beside him.Presently he stopped, his attention disturbed by what appeared to be the fluttering of a black-winged, red-crested bird, in the bushes before him.The next moment he discovered it to be the rose-covered head of Dona Isabel, who was running towards them.Eleanor withdrew her arm from Hurlstone's."Ah, imbecile!" said Dona Isabel, pouncing upon Eleanor Keene like an affectionate panther."They have said you were on the seashore, and I fly for you as a bird.Tell to me quick," she whispered, hastily putting her own little brown ear against Miss Keene's mouth, "immediatamente, are you much happy?""Where is Mr.Brace?" said Miss Keene, trying to effect a diversion, as she laughed and struggled to get free from her tormentor."He, the idiot boy! Naturally, when he is for use, he comes not.But as a maniac—ever! I would that I have him no more.You will to me presently give your—brother! I have since to-day a presentimiento that him I shall love! Ah!"She pressed her little brown fist, still tightly clutching her fan, against her low bodice, as if already transfixed with a secret and absorbing passion."Well, you shall have Dick then," said Miss Keene, laughing; "but was it for THAT you were seeking me?""Mother of God! you know not then what has happened? You are a blind—a deaf—to but one thing all the time? Ah!" she said quickly, unfolding her fan and modestly diving her little head behind it, "I have ashamed for you, Miss Keene.""But WHAT has happened?" said Hurlstone, interposing to relieve his companion."We fancied something"—"Something! he says something!—ah, that something was a temblor! An earthquake! The earth has shaken himself.Look!"She pointed with her fan to the shore, where the sea had suddenly returned in a turbulence of foam and billows that was breaking over the base of the cross they had just quitted.Miss Keene drew a quick sigh.Dona Isabel had ducked again modestly behind her fan, but this time dragging with her other arm Miss Keene's head down to share its discreet shadow as she whispered,—"And—infatuated one!—you two never noticed it!"CHAPTER V.CLOUDS AND CHANGE.The earthquake shock, although the first experienced by the Americans, had been a yearly phenomenon to the people of Todos Santos, and was so slight as to leave little impression upon either the low adobe walls of the pueblo or the indolent population."If it's a provision of Nature for shaking up these Rip Van Winkle Latin races now and then, it's a dead failure, as far as Todos Santos is concerned," Crosby had said, with a yawn."Brace, who's got geology on the brain ever since he struck cinnabar ore, says he isn't sure the Injins ain't right when they believe that the Pacific Ocean used to roll straight up to the Presidio, and there wasn't any channel—and that reef of rocks was upheaved in their time.But what's the use of it? it never really waked them up." "Perhaps they're waiting for another kind of earthquake," Winslow had responded sententiously.In six weeks it had been forgotten, except by three people—Miss Keene, James Hurlstone, and Padre Esteban.Since Hurlstone had parted with Miss Keene on that memorable afternoon he had apparently lapsed into his former reserve.Without seeming to avoid her timid advances, he met her seldom, and then only in the presence of the Padre or Mrs.Markham.Although uneasy at the deprivation of his society, his present shyness did not affect her as it had done at first: she knew it was no longer indifference; she even fancied she understood it from what had been her own feelings.If he no longer raised his eyes to hers as frankly as he had that day, she felt a more delicate pleasure in the consciousness of his lowered eyelids when they met, and the instinct that told her when his melancholy glance followed her unobserved.The sex of these lovers—if we may call them so who had never exchanged a word of love—seemed to be changed.It was Miss Keene who now sought him with a respectful and frank admiration; it was Hurlstone who now tried to avoid it with a feminine dread of reciprocal display.Once she had even adverted to the episode of the cross.They were standing under the arch of the refectory door, waiting for Padre Esteban, and looking towards the sea."Do you think we were ever in any real danger, down there, on the shore—that day?" she said timidly."No; not from the sea," he replied, looking at her with a half defiant resolution."From what then?" she asked, with a naivete that was yet a little conscious [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]