d by changing lights;
her hair was partly covered by a lace mantilla, through which her arms,
bare to the shoulder, gleamed white; her figure, full and soft in all
the womanly contours, was yet alive and active, light with excess of
life, and slender by grace of some divine proportion.

"You do not like my cigarrito, Senor?" she asked. "Yet it is better made
than yours." At that she laughed, and her laughter trilled in his ear
like music; but the next moment her face fell. "I see," she cried. "It
is my manner that repels you. I am too constrained, too cold. I am not,"
she added, with a more engaging air, "I am not the simple English maiden
I appear."

"Oh!" murmured Harry, filled with inexpressible thoughts.

"In my own dear land," she pursued, "things are differently ordered.
There, I must own, a girl is bound by many and rigorous restrictions;
little is permitted her; she learns to be distant, she learns to appear
forbidding. But here, in free England--oh, glorious liberty!" she cried,
and threw up her arms with a gesture of inimitable grace--"here there
are no fetters; here the woman may dare to be herself entirely, and the
men, the chivalrous men--is it not written on the very shield of your
nation, _honi soit_? Ah, it is hard for me to learn, hard for me to dare
to be myself. You must not judge me yet awhile; I shall end by
conquering this stiffness, I shall end by growing English. Do I speak
the language well?"

"Perfectly--oh, perfectly!" said Harry, with a fervency of conviction
worthy of a graver subject.

"Ah, then," she said, "I shall soon learn; English blood ran in my
father's veins; and I have had the advantage of some training in your
expressive tongue. If I speak already without accent, with my thorough
English appearance, there is nothing left to change except my manners."

"Oh no," said Desborough. "Oh, pray not! I--madam----"

"I am," interrupted the lady, "the Senorita Teresa Valdevia. The evening
air grows chill. Adios, Senorito." And before Harry could stammer out a
word, she had disappeared into her room.

He stood transfixed, the cigarette still unlighted in his hand. His
thoughts had soared above tobacco, and still recalled and beautified the
image of his new acquaintance. Her voice re-echoed in his memory; her
eyes, of which he could not tell the colour, haunted his soul. The
clouds had risen at her coming, and he beheld a new-created world. What
she was, he could not fancy, but he ado