The great heat of the day was past, the sun was already dipping towards the tree-tops, and the shadows were beginning to stretch themselves out over the broad walks of the Quinta de Don Alfonso. The wide porch, covered with honeysuckle, passion-flowers, and other creepers, was at this time of the day the coolest part of the house, here Magdalen sat alone in a low chair, sewing. She was dressed in a plain gown of dove-coloured muslin, fitting closely round the base of her neck, leaving her throat uncovered, girded round the waist with a belt of blue velvet, fastened by a silver buckle. Narrow straight sleeves covered her arms down to the wrists, where they were confined by bands of blue velvet and terminated in little white frills. Her glossy brown hair was bound round her head by a fillet of blue silk, from which sundry stray locks had escaped, and lay in broad curls upon her neck and shoulders. She was not very diligently at work, every now and then she would pause, and laying down her task gazed with dreamy, far-looking eyes, out through the bright sunshine and through the foliage of the trees upon the white towers and domes of the city, so near to look upon, and yet to her so far off. For she knew hardly anything of what had happened there for two weeks past, she herself having never left the quinta and her father but once all that time, while the only visitor who had been with them was Don Fausto Velasquez. Since his visit her father had been very anxious and troubled, but of his trouble he had told her nothing. That morning his face had brightened, and he had gone into the city, from which he had not yet returned. So she sat alternately stitching and gazing, watching the lengthening shadows of the trees, eagerly looking at any who passed on the adjacent road, listening to the sound of any footstep that came near her, waiting and thinking. Waiting for her father, who came not, thinking of many things. Waiting for her father, who had told her when he went that he hoped to bring her good news on his return; thinking of what these news would be, yet doubting much that the news which would most please her would be but of small import to him. As she thus sat she heard a footstep close to her, a footstep which she knew well, coming up the garden walk, close to the house. This footstep, light and quick, she had learned to know, for it had brought her joy many times, and now her heart bounded with a wild delight, and she whispered to herself: "He is free." Then a sudden pang shot through her and quenched her joy. The blood which had rushed to her face at the first sound of that footstep fled back again to her heart, and left her with pale cheeks and a nervous contraction of the lips, as she thought of some words which had been said to her days before by Doña Josefina, and of a girl of radiant beauty of whom he had spoken in terms of warm admiration.