to and interested in the conversation. Smellie, more easy and
comfortable, both in mind and body, than he had been for many a day,
abandoned himself to the pleasant influences of his surroundings and
bore his part like the cultured English gentleman he was; his deep rich
melodious voice, easy graceful bearing, commanding figure, and handsome
face, still pale and wan from his recent sufferings, evidently proving
immensely attractive to Dona Antonia, much to my secret disgust. As for
me, I am afraid I did little more than sit a silent worshipper at the
shrine of this sylvan beauty upon whom we had so unexpectedly stumbled.

Don Manuel informed us that, though a Spaniard by birth, he had spent so
many years in England that all his tastes and sympathies had become
thoroughly Anglicised; that his second wife, Dona Antonia's mother, had
been an Englishwoman; that he was an enthusiastic naturalist; and that
he had chosen the banks of the Congo for his home principally in order
that he might be able to study fully and at his leisure the fauna and
flora of that little-known region; adding parenthetically that he had
found the step not only a thoroughly agreeable but also a fairly
profitable one, by doing a little occasional business with the whites
who frequented the river on the one hand and with the natives on the
other. I thought he looked a trifle discomposed when Smellie informed
him that we were English naval officers, and I am quite sure he did when
he was further informed that we had been in the hands of the natives. A
very perceptible shade of anxiety clouded his features when Smellie
recounted our adventures from the moment of our leaving the _Daphne_;
and once or twice he shook his head in a manner which seemed to suggest
the idea that he thought we might perhaps prove to be rather dangerous
guests, under all the circumstances. If, however, any such idea really
entered his mind he was careful to restrain all expression of it, and at
the end of Smellie's narrative he uttered just the few courteous phrases
of polite concern which seemed appropriate to the occasion and then
allowed the subject to drop. Dona Antonia, on the contrary, evinced a
most lively interest in the story, her face lighting up and her eyes
flashing as she asked question after question, and her parted lips
quivering with excitement and sympathetic apprehension as Smellie
lightly touched upon the critical situations in which we had once or
twice