"Beppa! Beppina!" cried a firm, a warm, a sonorous, soprano voice.
"_Apri la porta_. Open the door."

And with a slight inclination of her splendid head of thick auburn hair
that seemed to crown her with a helmet of old gold, she smiled to him
with a friendly, somewhat mocking, intimacy:

"Welcome, Rafaelito. I don't know why, but I was expecting you this
afternoon. We have heard all about your triumphs; the music and the
tumult reached even to our desert. My congratulations to the Honorable
don Rafael Brull. Come right in, I _su señoría_."




II


From Valencia to Játiva, in all that immense territory covered with
rice-fields and orange groves which Valencians embrace under the general
and rather vague designation of _La Ribera_, there was no one unfamiliar
with the name of Brull and the political power it stood for.

As if national unity had not yet been effected and the country were
still divided into _taifas_ and _waliatos_ as in the days when one
Moorish King reigned over Carlet, another over Denia, and a third over
Játiva, the election system maintained a sort of inviolable rulership in
every district; and when the Administration people came to Alcira in
forecasting their political prospects, they always said the same thing: