thanks, and gratefully
accepts your hospitality--And now that we know each other, Monsieur
l'Abbe, might I ask the favor of an introduction to the young lady to whom
I owe my deliverance from the nandu?"

"She is Angela, monsieur. My people call her Senorita Angela. It pleases
me sometimes to speak of her as Angela Dieu-donnee, for she was sent to us
by God, and ever since she came among us she has been our good angel."

"I am sure she has. Nobody with so sweet a face could be otherwise than
good," I said, with an admiring glance at the beautiful girl which dyed
the damask of her cheek a yet deeper crimson.

It was no mere compliment. In all my wanderings I have not beheld the
equal of Angela Dieu-donnee. Though I can see her now, though I learned to
paint in order that, however inadequately, I might make her likeness, I am
unable to describe her; words can give no idea of the comeliness of her
face, the grace of her movements, and the shapeliness of her form. I have
seen women with skins as fair, hair as dark, eyes as deeply blue, but none
with the same brightness of look and sweetness of disposition, none with
courage as high, temper as serene.

To look at Angela was to love her, though as yet I knew not that I had
regained my liberty only to lose my heart. My feelings at the moment
oscillated between admiration of her and a painful sense of my own
disreputable appearance. Bareheaded and shoeless, covered with the dust of
the desert, clad only in a torn shirt and ragged trousers, my arms and
legs scored with livid marks, I must have seemed a veritable scarecrow.
Angela looked like a queen, or would have done were queens ever so
charming, or so becomingly attired. Her low-crowned hat was adorned with
beautiful flowers; a loose-fitting alpaca robe of light blue set off her
form to the best advantage, and round her waist was a golden baldrick
which supported a sheaf of arrows. At her breast was an orchid which in
Europe would have been almost priceless, her shapely arms were bare to the
shoulder, and her sandaled feet were innocent of hosen.

I was wondering who could have designed this costume, in which there was a
savor of the pictures of Watteau and the court of Versailles, how so
lovely a creature could have found her way to a place so remote as San
Cristobal de Quipai, when the abbe resumed the conversation.

"Angela came to us as strangely and unexpectedly as you have come,
Monsieur Nigel" (he found my Christ