uldn't
trouble you as it troubled me."

"Are you trying to be tactful now?" Clare asked, smiling.

"No; it's my misfortune that I haven't much tact. If I had, I might be
able to straighten matters out."

"Don't you understand that they can't be straightened out?"

"I don't," Dick answered stubbornly. "For all that, I won't trouble you
again until I find a way out of the tangle."

Clare gave him a quick, disturbed look. "It would be much better if you
took it for granted that we must, to some extent, be enemies."

"No. I'm afraid your father and I are enemies, but that's not the same."

"It is; you can see that it must be," Clare insisted; and then, as if
anxious to change the subject, went on: "He was too busy to bring me
to-night so I came with Don Sebastian and his wife. It is not very gay in
Santa Brigida and one gets tired of being alone."

Her voice fell a little as she concluded, and Dick, who understood
something of her isolation from friends of her race, longed to take her
in his arms and comfort her. Indeed, had the quarter-deck been deserted
he might have tried, for he felt that her refusal had sprung from wounded
pride and a sense of duty. There was something in her manner that hinted
that it had not been easy to send him away. Yet he saw she could be firm
and thought it wise to follow her lead.

"Then your father has been occupied lately," he remarked.

"Yes; he is often away. He goes to Adexe and is generally busy in the
evenings. People come to see him and keep him talking in his room. Our
friends no longer spend the evening in the patio."

Dick understood her. She wanted to convince him that Kenwardine was a
business man and only gambled when he had nothing else to do. Indeed, her
motive was rather pitifully obvious, and Dick knew that he had not been
mistaken about her character. Clare had, no doubt, once yielded to her
father's influence, but it was impossible that she took any part in his
plots. She was transparently honest; he knew this as he watched her color
come and go.

"After all, I don't think you liked many of the people who came," he
said.

"I liked Jake," she answered and stopped with a blush, while Dick felt
half ashamed, because he had deprived her of the one companion she could
trust.

"Well," he said, "it isn't altogether my fault that Jake doesn't come to
see you. We have had some accidents that delayed the work and he has not
been able to leave the dam."

He was silen