looking out past the mango trees at the lake. A distant sailing canoe was going down the breeze, on the pallid, unreal water. Away across rose the bluish, grooved mountains, with the white speck of a village: far away in the morning it seemed, in another world, in another life, in another mode of time.
“What is that village?” Kate asked.
“That one? That one there? It is San Ildefonso,” said Doña Carlota, in her fluttering eagerness.
“But it is beautiful here!” Kate repeated.
“Hermoso—si! Si, bonito!” quavered the other woman uneasily, always answering in Spanish.
The house, reddish and yellow in colour, had two short wings towards the lake. The terrace, with green plants on the terrace wall, went round the three sides, the roof above supported by big square pillars that rose from the ground. Down below, the pillars made a sort of cloisters around