take
this, and drink my health!"

The sergeant flushed crimson, and drew himself up stiffly, as he said,
with another formal salute, "Madam, you mistake!"

"Strange!" she exclaimed, scornfully. "I thought all soldiers liked
drink. Well, keep the money; spend it as you like."

"I cannot take it, madam; I am paid by the Queen to do my duty."

"And you will not take a bribe to neglect it? Very fine, truly!
General Wilders shall know how well you executed his commands. But
there!--I have had enough of this; I wish to return to the yacht. Show
me the shortest way back to the water side. Lead on; I will follow
you."

Sergeant McKay took a short cut down the steep steps, and soon
regained the Waterport. There Mrs. Wilders hailed a native boat, and,
without condescending to notice the orderly further, she seated
herself in the stern-sheets and was rowed off to the _Arcadia_.

CHAPTER VIII.

A SOUTHERN PEARL.

"Mariquita! Ma--ri--kee--tah!"

A woman's voice, shrill and quavering, with an accent of anger that
increased each time the summons was repeated.

"What's come of the young vixen?" went on the speaker, addressing her
husband, the Tio Pedro, who sat with her behind the counter of a small
tobacconist's shop--an ugly beldame, shrank and shrivelled, with grey
elf-locks, sunk cheeks, and parchment complexion, looking ninety, yet
little more than half that age. Women ripen early, are soon at their
prime, and fade prematurely, under this quickening Southern sun.

The husband was older, yet better preserved, than his wife--a large,
stout man, with a fierce face and black, baleful eyes. All cowered
before him except La Zandunga, as they called his wife here in
Bombardier Lane. He was at her mercy--a Spaniard resident on the Rock
by permit granted to his wife--a native of Gibraltar, and liable to be
expelled at any time unless she answered for him.

The shop and stock-in-trade were hers, not his, and she ruled him and
the whole place.

"Mariquita!" she called again and again, till at length, overflowing
with passion, she rushed from behind the counter into the premises at
the back of the shop.

She entered a small but well-lighted room, communicating with a few
square feet of garden. At the end was a low fence; beyond this the
roadway intervening between the garden and the Line wall, or seaward
fortifications.

La Zandunga looked hastily round the room. It contained half-a-dozen
small low tables, drawn n