napkins tucked under their chins, rose, offering to move rather than
divide friends; but Carmona assured them that the sacrifice was
unnecessary. As they were all paralysed by Monica's beauty, of a type so
different from any to which they were accustomed, they had not the
self-command to protest; and as dinner went on (in many courses of which
the landlord was evidently proud), they could scarcely do justice to their
_merluza_ served with grilled lemon and minced red Spanish pepper; their
_tortilla_ of eggs, potatoes, peas, and ham; their pigeons with olives, or
even their freshly baked maccaroni, for gazing languorously at the vision
of pink and white and gold.

Such charms as Pilar's, though unsurpassable of their kind, went for
nothing with these ardent gentlemen; and even the landlord's son,
daughters, and nieces who waited upon their guests, forgot half their
duties in abject admiration. "An angel!" "a saint!" "a princess of
fairyland!" were a few of their whispered adjectives; and when the object
of their worship was snatched away by her mother and the Duchess, before
the goats'-milk cheese had been brought round, a gloom fell upon the room.
The commercial travellers galloped through the remainder of the meal, and
went out, hoping perhaps, if they promenaded the street, to have the joy
of seeing a light in the radiant being's window. The pretty girls of the
household vanished with murmured excuses, leaving us at the mercy of the
boy, who sighed grievously, dropped a sugar bowl, and spilled coffee
within an ace of the Cherub's shoulder.

Pilar presently disappeared also, leaving her three men alone at the
table, observed only by a few dozen eager faces pressed against the iron
bars protecting the open window.

Soon we heard peals of laughter from the _patio_; the pretty girls were
sallying forth on a foraging expedition in search of a warming-pan to heat
the beds of the three great ladies, who feared dampness. In twenty minutes
they came back, and we arrived in the _patio_ in time to see the triumphal
entrance of four or five charming creatures, bearing among them a
long-handled brass vessel which had probably existed since the days of
Philip the Second. But this was only the beginning of the fun; and we made
an excuse of our cigarettes to linger, and hear what we could not see.

It was not a beautiful _patio_; and the public still surged outside the
iron-grated door in the hope of further insight into the privat