irl was sitting
with her hands to her temples and her elbows on the long table, minutely
examining the motionlessness of a baby lizard, a tiny thing with golden
eyes, whom fear seemed to have turned into stone.

We entered quietly, and after a moment she looked up candidly into my
eyes, and placed her finger on her lips, motioning her head towards her
father. She placed her hand in mine, and whispered very clearly:

"Be welcome, my English cousin," and then dropped her eyes again to the
lizard.

She knew all about me from Carlos. The man of whom I had seen only the
top of his head, turned his chair suddenly and glinted at me with little
blue eyes. He was rather small and round, with very firm flesh, and very
white, plump hands. He was dressed in the black clothes of a Spanish
judge. On his round face there was always a smile like that which
hangs around the jaws of a pike--only more humorous. He bowed a little
exaggeratedly to me and said:

"Ah, ye are that famous Mr. Kemp."

I said that I imagined him the more famous Senor Juez O'Brien.

"It's little use saying ye arren't famous," he said. His voice had the
faint, infinitely sweet twang of certain Irishry; a thing as delicate
and intangible as the scent of lime flowers. "Our noble friend"--he
indicated Carlos with a little flutter of one white hand--"has told me
what make of a dare-devil gallant ye are; breaking the skulls of half
the Bow Street runners for the sake of a friend in distress. Well,
I honour ye for it; I've done as much myself." He added, "In the old
days," and sighed.

"You mean in the '98," I said, a little insolently.

O'Brien's eyes twinkled. He had, as a matter of fact, nearly lost his
neck in the Irish fiasco, either in Clonmel or Sligo, bolting violently
from the English dragoons, in the mist, to a French man-of-war's boats
in the bay. To him, even though he was now a judge in Cuba, it was an
episode of heroism of youth--of romance, in fact. So that, probably, he
did not resent my mention of it. I certainly wanted to resent something
that was slighting in his voice, and patronizing in his manner.

The old Don slumbered placidly, his face turned up to the distant
begrimed ceiling.

"Now, I'll make you a fair offer," O'Brien said suddenly, after an
intent study of the insolent glance that I gave him. I disliked him
because I knew nothing about the sort of man he was. He was, as a matter
of fact, more alien to me than Carlos. And he gave m