me at the instant,
Pancho, that you will not again look upon Miss Essmith, even for once."

I was simple and literal. Miss Smith was my nearest neighbor, and
unless I was stricken with blindness, compliance was impossible. I
hesitated--but swore.

"Enofe--you have hesitate--I will no more."

She rose to her feet with grave deliberation. For an instant, with the
recollection of the delicate internal organization of the Saltellos on
my mind, I was in agony lest she should totter and fall, even then,
yielding up her gentle spirit on the spot. But when I looked again, she
had a hairpin between her white teeth and was carefully adjusting her
toreador hat. And beside us was Enriquez--cheerful, alert, voluble, and
undaunted.

"Eureka! I have found! We are all here! Eet is a leetle public--eh! A
leetle too much of a front seat for a _tete-a-tete_,[167-1] my yonge
friends," he said, glancing at the remains of Consuelo's bower, "but
for the accounting of taste there is none. What will you? The meat of
the one man shall envenom the meat of the other. But" (in a whisper to
me) "as to thees horse--thees Chu Chu, which I have just pass--why is
she undress? Surely you would no make an exposition of her to the
traveler to suspect! And if not, why so?"

I tried to explain, looking at Consuelo, that Chu Chu had run away,
that Consuelo had met with a terrible accident, had been thrown, and I
feared had suffered serious internal injury. But to my embarrassment
Consuelo maintained a half scornful silence, and an inconsistent
freshness of healthful indifference, as Enriquez approached her with an
engaging smile. "Ah, yes, she have the headache, and the molligrubs.
She will sit on the damp stone when the gentle dew is falling. I
comprehend. Meet me in the lane when the clock strike nine! But," in a
lower voice, "of thees undress horse I comprehend nothing! Look you--it
is sad and strange."

He went off to fetch Chu Chu, leaving me and Consuelo alone. I do not
think I ever felt so utterly abject and bewildered before in my life.
Without knowing why, I was miserably conscious of having in some way
offended the girl for whom I believed I would have given my life, and I
had made her and myself ridiculous in the eyes of her brother. I had
again failed in my slower Western nature to understand her high
romantic Spanish soul! Meantime she was smoothing out her riding habit,
and looking as fresh and pretty as when she first left her house.