She had had SUCH a wonderfully interesting walk, all by herself, alone on the plain. It was really so queer and elfish to find one's self where one could see nothing above or around one anywhere but stars. Stars above one, to right and left of one, and some so low down they seemed as if they were picketed on the plain. It was so odd to find the horizon line at one's very feet, like a castaway at sea. And the wind! it seemed to move one this way and that way, for one could not see anything, and might really be floating in the air. Only once she thought she saw something, and was quite frightened. “What was it?” asked Dick quickly. “Well, it was a large black object; but--it turned out only to be a horse.” She laughed, although she had evidently noticed her cousin's eagerness, and her own eyes had a nervous brightness. “And where was Dick all this while?” asked Aunt Viney quietly. Cecily interrupted, and answered for him briskly. “Oh, he was trying to make attar of rose of himself in the garden. He's still stupefied by his own sweetness.” “If this means,” said Aunt Viney, with matter-of-fact precision, “that you've been gallivanting all alone, Cecily, on that common plain, where you're likely to meet all sorts of foreigners and tramps and savages, and Heaven knows what other vermin, I shall set my face against a repetition of it. If you MUST go out, and Dick can't go with you--and I must say that even you and he going out together there at night isn't exactly the kind of American Christian example to set to our neighbors--you had better get Concepcion to go with you and take a lantern.” “But there is nobody one meets on the plain--at least, nobody likely to harm one,” protested Cecily. “Don't tell ME,” said Aunt Viney decidedly; “haven't I seen all sorts of queer figures creeping along by the brink after nightfall between San Gregorio and the next rancho? Aren't they always skulking backwards and forwards to mass and aguardiente?” “And I don't know why WE should set any example to our neighbors. We don't see much of them, or they of us.” “Of course not,” returned Aunt Viney; “because all proper Spanish young ladies are shut up behind their grilles at night. You don't see THEM traipsing over the plain in the darkness, WITH or WITHOUT cavaliers! Why, Don Rafael would lock one of HIS sisters up in a convent and consider her disgraced forever, if he heard of it.” Dick felt his cheeks burning; Cecily slightly paled. Yet both said eagerly together: “Why, what do YOU know about it, Aunty?” “A great deal,” returned Aunt Viney quietly, holding her tatting up to the light and examining the stitches with a critical eye. “I've got my eyes about me, thank heaven! even if my ears don't understand the language. And there's a great deal, my dears, that you young people might learn from these Papists.” “And do you mean to say,” continued Dick, with a glowing cheek and an uneasy smile, “that Spanish girls don't go out alone?”