ittle Princess, holding out her
hands.

John Mortimer made a confused noise in his throat and presently was
compelled to join the circle and dance slowly round, his countenance
meantime suggestive of the mental reserve that such undignified
proceedings could only be excused as being remotely connected with the
safe shipment of a hundred hogsheads of Priorato.

"_The children walk like this,
And the ladies walk like that----_"

There was no help for it. Etienne and the Princess first mimicked the
careless trip of the children, and then, with chin in the air and lift
of imaginary furbelow, the haughty tread of the good dames of Avignon
as they took their way homeward over that ancient bridge.

But suddenly arrested with both hands in the air and his mouth open,
John Mortimer looked on in confusion and a kind of mental stupor. He was
glad that no one of his nation was present to see him making a fool of
himself. The next moment Isabel had seized his hand, and he found
himself again whirling lumpishly round to the ancient refrain:--

"_Sur le pont d' Avignon,
Tout le monde y passe!_"

The little Queen's merry laugh rang out at his awkwardness, and then
seeing Rollo she ran impetuously to him.

"Come you and play," she cried, "the red foreigner plays like a wooden
puppet. And where is that darling little page-boy from Aranjuez?"

"That I cannot tell," quoth Rollo, smiling, "but here comes his sister!"

A moment after Concha entered the room talking confidentially to La
Giralda. She was now dressed in her own girlish costume of belted
blouse, black _basquina_ pleated small after the Andalucian manner, and
the quaint and pretty _rebozo_ thrown coquettishly back from the finest
and most bewitching hair in Spain.

The little Isabel went up to Concha, took her by the hand, perused her
from head to foot, and then remarked with deep feeling--

"You are very well, Senorita, but--I liked your brother better!"

CHAPTER XL

ALL DANDIES ARE NOT COWARDS

It was not, however, so simple a matter as Rollo supposed to obtain an
audience with the Queen-Regent of Spain. Her daughter, willing, but by
no means eager to see her mother, had at last been taken up to her room
by one of the serving-men, whose faithfulness during the night had been
so greatly stimulated by La Giralda's declared intention of shooting
either of them who should fail from his post for an instant.

To the same gold-laced functiona