of it? He is good company. He talks
well, he sings well, he is very handsome and--well, what difference can
it make to you? You are not interested in _me_, _amigo_."

"No, no; of course I'm not. You are nothing to me at all--you--oh, I beg
your pardon; I didn't quite mean that. I--I mean you are nothing to me
in that way. But you--you're not keeping to your word. You promised, you
know, that you'd use your influence with Zuilika; that you'd get her to
be more kind to me--to see me alone and--and all that sort of thing. And
you've not made a single attempt. You've just sat round and flirted with
that tow-headed brute and done nothing at all to help me on; and--and
it's jolly unkind of you, that's what!"

Cleek heard Anita's soft rippling laughter; but he waited to hear no
more. Moving swiftly away from the well-hole of the staircase he passed
on tiptoe down the hall to the major's rooms, and opening the door, went
in. The old soldier was standing, with arms folded, at the window
looking silently out into the darkness of the night. He turned at the
sound of the door's opening and moved toward Cleek with a white,
agonized face and a pair of shaking, outstretched hands.

"Well?" he said with a sort of gasp.

"My dear Major," said Cleek quietly. "The wisest of men are sometimes
mistaken. That is my excuse for my own shortsightedness. I said in the
beginning that this was either a case of swindling or a case of murder,
did I not? Well, I now amend my verdict. It is a case of swindling _and_
murder; and your son has had nothing to do with either!"

"Oh, thank God! thank God!" the old man said; then sat down suddenly and
dropped his face between his hands and was still for a long time. When
he looked up again his eyes were red, but his lips were smiling.

"If you only knew what a relief it is," he said. "If you only knew how
much I have suffered, Mr. Cleek. His friendship with that Spanish woman;
his going with her to identify the body--even assisting in its hurried
burial! These things all seemed so frightfully black, so utterly without
any explanation other than personal guilt."

"Yet they all are easily explained, Major. His friendship for the
Spanish woman is merely due to a promise to intercede for him with
Zuilika. She is his one aim and object, poor little donkey! As for his
identification of the body--well, if the widow herself could find points
of undisputed resemblance, why not he? A nervous, excitable, impetuo