Brandon of the Engineers by Harold Bindloss

It was a hot evening and Clare sat at a table in the patio, trying to read. The light was bad, for buzzing insects hovered about the lamp, but the house had not cooled down yet and she wanted to distract her troubled thoughts. Footsteps and voices rose from the street outside, where the citizens were passing on their way to the plaza, but the sounds were faint and muffled by the high walls. The house had been built in times when women were jealously guarded and a dwelling was something of a fort. Now, with the iron gate in the narrow, arched entrance barred, the girl was securely cut off from the exotic life of the city.

This isolation was sometimes a comfort, but it sometimes jarred. Clare was young, and fond of cheerful society, and the iron gate had its counterpart in another barrier, invisible but strong, that shut her out from much she would have enjoyed. She often stood, so to speak, gazing wistfully between the bars at innocent pleasures in which she could not join. Kenwardine, in spite of his polished manners, was tactfully avoided by English and Americans of the better class, and their wives and daughters openly showed their disapproval.