e the only finishing
touch required to as piquant and graceful a costume as I ever saw.

Courtenay's companion, little Eugenia Gonzalez, was a striking contrast
to her foster-sister. She was a couple of inches shorter in stature,
and less slender in figure; a blonde, with blue eyes and just the
faintest suggestion of ruddiness in the tints of her hair; a merry,
good-humoured expression of countenance; and altogether, though of
humble parentage, as dainty, piquant a little beauty as anyone would
wish to see.

As may be supposed, with such visitors as these to entertain, our work
that afternoon did not progress very rapidly; but Courtenay and I
quieted our consciences by entering into a mutual compact to exercise
such increased diligence in the future as should fully make up for lost
time. But when, an afternoon or two later, we overtook our fair friends
in the park as we were making our way back to the workshop after our
mid-day meal, and they seemed again inclined to favour us with their
company, our good resolves took flight and we once more neglected our
work in the enjoyment of their society.

This, however, I saw would never do. It seemed pretty evident that,
being so strictly secluded within the confines of the castle demesne as
these two girls were, our appearance upon the scene had assumed almost
the importance of an event in their lives, and had wrought so
interesting a change in the somewhat monotonous daily routine of their
existence that the unsophisticated creatures had each inwardly resolved
to make the most of the novelty whilst the opportunity to do so
remained. And in that case our work was likely to suffer both in
quality and quantity. This, I felt, ought not to be allowed. At the
same time the pleasure to be derived from their society was a thing not
to be lightly given up; and so the end of it all was that we prevailed
upon the two girls to walk with us in the park after dinner instead of
visiting the workshop. This arrangement was rendered all the more easy
by the arrival of a letter from the commandant announcing his detention
at Cartagena, and the probable delay of a month in the date of his
return.

CHAPTER TEN.

OUR FLIGHT--AND SUBSEQUENT MYSTIFICATION.

I am fully aware _now_ that in thus persuading the commandant's daughter
and her companion to meet us in the park we were quite inexcusable, and
that the fact that they were members of the family of a man who had very
materiall