lf, after I've finished picking up . . . "

"Bear!"

I returned with the box and placed it on the divan near her. She sat
cross-legged, leaning back on her arms, in the blue shimmer of her
embroidered robe and with the tawny halo of her unruly hair about her
face which she raised to mine with an air of resignation.

"George, my friend," she said, "we have no manners."

"You would never have made a career at court, Dona Rita," I observed.
"You are too impulsive."

"This is not bad manners, that's sheer insolence. This has happened to
you before. If it happens again, as I can't be expected to wrestle with
a savage and desperate smuggler single-handed, I will go upstairs and
lock myself in my room till you leave the house. Why did you say this to
me?"

"Oh, just for nothing, out of a full heart."

"If your heart is full of things like that, then my dear friend, you had
better take it out and give it to the crows. No! you said that for the
pleasure of appearing terrible. And you see you are not terrible at all,
you are rather amusing. Go on, continue to be amusing. Tell me
something of what you heard from the lips of that aristocratic old lady
who thinks that all men are equal and entitled to the pursuit of
happiness."

"I hardly remember now. I heard something about the unworthiness of
certain white geese out of stuffy drawing-rooms. It sounds mad, but the
lady knows exactly what she wants. I also heard your praises sung. I
sat there like a fool not knowing what to say."

"Why? You might have joined in the singing."

"I didn't feel in the humour, because, don't you see, I had been
incidentally given to understand that I was an insignificant and
superfluous person who had better get out of the way of serious people."

"Ah, _par example_!"

"In a sense, you know, it was flattering; but for the moment it made me
feel as if I had been offered a pot of mustard to sniff."

She nodded with an amused air of understanding and I could see that she
was interested. "Anything more?" she asked, with a flash of radiant
eagerness in all her person and bending slightly forward towards me.

"Oh, it's hardly worth mentioning. It was a sort of threat wrapped up, I
believe, in genuine anxiety as to what might happen to my youthful
insignificance. If I hadn't been rather on the alert just then I
wouldn't even have perceived the meaning. But really an allusion to 'hot
Southern blood' I could have only one meanin