ndmother, as all the best ones do
come to Spanish girls; and I've two lovely white mantillas which I wear on
great feast days when I want to be very beautiful."

"At bull-fights?" asked Dick, his eyes adoring her in a way he would have
laughed at in any other man only a few weeks ago.

"I don't go to bull-fights," said Pilar. "I love the poor bulls and horses
so much, it would make me sad to see them die. Though, if I were a bull, I
would myself choose a brave death in the arena, after a life of five
glorious years, rather than the slaughter-house, or a weary existence of
labour till old age or overstrain finished me. But I drive in the _paseo_
on the bull-fight days, and for the _feria_. _Ay de mi!_ A girl in Spain
has few other chances to make herself pretty for the world to see, unless
she lives in Madrid; and if it were not for the bull-fights, I suppose
many girls would never get husbands. But, Our Lady be thanked, I do not
have to look for one."

Did she mean that there was any understanding with Don Cipriano?

I knew this was the thought which flashed through Dick's mind. And if
Pilar had been desirable in motoring days, she was irresistible at home.

Before eight o'clock the Gloria was at the gates, and twenty minutes later
we were on foot in the street of the Gran Capitan, mingling with the crowd
who waited for the first procession of _Semana Santa_ to pour out from the
cathedral doors. But the crowd was not a dense one, and the face I hoped
to see was not there. "It will be a long time before anything happens,"
said the Cherub. "Here, when a thing should be at eight, it is at nine, or
maybe half-past. What does a little time matter? But mass is being said.
Who knows that the old Duchess may not have had a religious fit, and come
to hear it, bringing her friends?"

No more was needed to make me anxious to go in; and we entered the
cathedral, which is, to my mind, the most beautiful, inspiring, and poetic
in the world.

The two O'Donnels flitted away in the dusk, mysterious as the twilight of
the gods, and we guessed that they were going to hear mass. Soon they
found us again. They had not seen those for whom we searched; but the
procession was starting.

We made haste out before it, and none too soon, for it billowed forth
after us in a glitter of gold and purple vestments, and tall, bleached
palm-branches like beams of moonlight streaming against the blue of the
morning sky.

"They're not here," said