she may be. But there's something particularly
fascinating about this one."

"I see a serious objection to her from your point of view," I went on.
"She's too young. You draw the line at them under twenty-two. I'll bet you
she won't see twenty-two for a couple of years yet."

"She might be worth waiting for," said Dick.

"No good. She'll be married long before twenty-two. All self-respecting
Spanish girls are. You'd better not think of her any more. Forget her, and
look up Miss O'Donnel."

"Angele de la Mole says Miss O'Donnel's pretty," said Dick. As he spoke,
he beckoned a waiter; and I noticed that the girl with the eyes no longer
made any pretence of hiding her interest in Dick. She even whispered to
her companion, who, after listening to what she had to say, turned to look
at us with benign curiosity.

"Ask whether he knows Colonel O'Donnel and Miss O'Donnel by sight," Dick
commanded when the waiter appeared, to breathe benevolence and garlic upon
us in equal quantities. He was shy of airing his own Spanish before a
roomful of Spanish people.

I asked; the waiter looked surprised, and to Dick's confusion and my
astonishment, indicated the occupants of the next table.

"The colonel and the senorita," said he. It was so startlingly like an
introduction that the cherubic brown man sprang up and bowed; and the
girl, bending over the _mazapan_ in her plate, let us see the very top
coil on her crown of black hair.

Dick, overwhelmed, and recalling every word we had said, as a drowning man
recalls each wicked deed of his life from childhood up, got to his feet,
and began stammering explanations.

"Well, that shows what an idiot a man can make of himself," said he.
"Miss--Mademoiselle de la Mole gave me a letter of introduction, and a
parcel with some little present, and I was looking around for you. My
name's Richard Waring; I don't know whether mademoiselle's written about
me. Anyhow--"

"Senor," announced Colonel O'Donnel, grieved at Dick's distress; "no
entiendo."

"Habla usted espanol?" asked the girl. "No Inglees, we, much." And she
smiled a dimpled smile, straight at Dick, with one side glint for me.

Dick was, to use against him a favourite word of his own, flabbergasted.
"Then you're not Colonel and Miss O'Donnel?" said he. "I though you
couldn't be, but--"

"Si, si," the Cherub reassured him, nodding. "O'Donnel. Aw--right." He
laughed so contagiously that we laughed too; and I found my heart warm