d muster. "You have interrupted this young lady just when she was
foretelling me most interesting things!"

"The same as ever. There shall be an end to it!" he hissed between his
teeth, with a savage glance at her.

Meanwhile the _gitana_ was still talking to him in her own tongue. She
became more and more excited. Her eyes grew fierce and bloodshot,
her features contracted, she stamped her foot. She seemed to me to be
earnestly pressing him to do something he was unwilling to do. What this
was I fancied I understood only too well, by the fashion in which she
kept drawing her little hand backward and forward under her chin. I was
inclined to think she wanted to have somebody's throat cut, and I had a
fair suspicion the throat in question was my own. To all her torrent of
eloquence Don Jose's only reply was two or three shortly spoken words.
At this the gipsy cast a glance of the most utter scorn at him, then,
seating herself Turkish-fashion in a corner of the room, she picked out
an orange, tore off the skin, and began to eat it.

Don Jose took hold of my arm, opened the door, and led me into the
street. We walked some two hundred paces in the deepest silence. Then he
stretched out his hand.

"Go straight on," he said, "and you'll come to the bridge."

That instant he turned his back on me and departed at a great pace. I
took my way back to my inn, rather crestfallen, and considerably out
of temper. The worst of all was that, when I undressed, I discovered my
watch was missing.

Various considerations prevented me from going to claim it next day, or
requesting the _Corregidor_ to be good enough to have a search made
for it. I finished my work on the Dominican manuscript, and went on
to Seville. After several months spent wandering hither and thither in
Andalusia, I wanted to get back to Madrid, and with that object I had to
pass through Cordova. I had no intention of making any stay there, for
I had taken a dislike to that fair city, and to the ladies who bathed
in the Guadalquivir. Nevertheless, I had some visits to pay, and certain
errands to do, which must detain me several days in the old capital of
the Mussulman princes.

The moment I made my appearance in the Dominican convent, one of the
monks, who had always shown the most lively interest in my inquiries
as to the site of the battlefield of Munda, welcomed me with open arms,
exclaiming:

"Praised be God! You are welcome! My dear friend. We all thought y