the
Don, without a fear (so blind does money make men) lest she might be
herself drawn in. For, first, he held it as impossible that she would
think of marrying a Popish Spaniard as of marrying the man in the moon;
and, next, as impossible that he would think of marrying a burgher's
daughter as of marrying a negress; and trusted that the religion of the
one, and the family pride of the other, would keep them as separate as
beings of two different species. And as for love without marriage, if
such a possibility ever crossed him, the thought was rendered absurd;
on Rose's part by her virtue, on which the old roan (and rightly) would
have staked every farthing he had on earth; and on the Don's part, by a
certain human fondness for the continuity of the carotid artery and the
parts adjoining, for which (and that not altogether justly, seeing
that Don Guzman cared as little for his own life as he did for his
neighbor's) Mr. Salterne gave him credit. And so it came to pass, that
for weeks and months the merchant's house was the Don's favorite haunt,
and he saw the Rose of Torridge daily, and the Rose of Torridge heard
him.

And as for her, poor child, she had never seen such a man. He had, or
seemed to have, all the high-bred grace of Frank, and yet he was cast in
a manlier mould; he had just enough of his nation's proud self-assertion
to make a woman bow before him as before a superior, and yet tact enough
to let it very seldom degenerate into that boastfulness of which the
Spaniards were then so often and so justly accused. He had marvels to
tell by flood and field as many and more than Amyas; and he told
them with a grace and an eloquence of which modest, simple, old Amyas
possessed nothing. Besides, he was on the spot, and the Leighs were not,
nor indeed were any of her old lovers; and what could she do but amuse
herself with the only person who came to hand?

So thought, in time, more ladies than she; for the country, the north of
it at least, was all but bare just then of young gallants, what with the
Netherland wars and the Irish wars; and the Spaniard became soon welcome
at every house for many a mile round, and made use of his welcome so
freely, and received so much unwonted attention from fair young dames,
that his head might have been a little turned, and Rose Salterne have
thereby escaped, had not Sir Richard delicately given him to understand
that in spite of the free and easy manners of English ladies, brothers