you away in a sack? My master can not wait."

"Don Yturrio of Mexico, on the other hand," she mused, "promised me not
violence, but more jewels. Idiot!"

"Indeed!" I rejoined, in contempt. "An American savage would give you
but one gown, and that of your own weave; you could make it up as you
liked. But come, now; I have no more time to lose."

"Ah, also, idiot!" she murmured. "Do you not see that I must reclothe
myself before I could go with you--that is to say, if I choose to go
with you? Now, as I was saying, my ardent Mexican promises thus and so.
My lord of England--ah, well, they may be pardoned. Suppose I might
listen to such suits--might there not be some life for me--some life
with events? On the other hand, what of interest could America offer?"

"I have told you what life America could give you."

"I imagined men were but men, wherever found," she went on; "but what
you say interests me, I declare to you again. A woman is a woman, too, I
fancy. She always wants one thing--to be all the world to one man."

"Quite true," I answered. "Better that than part of the world to one--or
two? And the opposite of it is yet more true. When a woman is all the
world to a man, she despises him."

"But yes, I should like that experience of being a cook in a cabin, and
being bruised and broken and choked!" She smiled, lazily extending her
flawless arms and looking down at them, at all of her splendid figure,
as though in interested examination. "I am alone so much--so bored!" she
went on. "And Sir Richard Pakenham is so very, very fat. Ah, God! You
can not guess how fat he is. But you, you are not fat." She looked me
over critically, to my great uneasiness.

"All the more reason for doing as I have suggested, Madam; for Mr.
Calhoun is not even so fat as I am. This little interview with my chief,
I doubt not, will prove of interest. Indeed"--I went on seriously and
intently--"I venture to say this much without presuming on my station:
the talk which you will have with my chief to-night will show you things
you have never known, give you an interest in living which perhaps you
have not felt. If I am not mistaken, you will find much in common
between you and my master. I speak not to the agent of England, but to
the lady Helena von Ritz."

"He is old," she went on. "He is very old. His face is thin and
bloodless and fleshless. He is old."

"Madam," I said, "his mind is young, his purpose young, his ambition
young; and