filas legitimas_. With that notion in her head she had asked him
about the welfare of that other model of charm and elegance, Captain
Blunt. To her extreme surprise the charming young gentleman with
beautiful eyes had apparently never heard of Blunt. But he seemed very
much interested in his surroundings, looked all round the hall, noted the
costly wood of the door panels, paid some attention to the silver
statuette holding up the defective gas burner at the foot of the stairs,
and, finally, asked whether this was in very truth the house of the most
excellent Senora Dona Rita de Lastaola. The question staggered Therese,
but with great presence of mind she answered the young gentleman that she
didn't know what excellence there was about it, but that the house was
her property, having been given to her by her own sister. At this the
young gentleman looked both puzzled and angry, turned on his heel, and
got back into his fiacre. Why should people be angry with a poor girl
who had never done a single reprehensible thing in her whole life?

"I suppose our Rita does tell people awful lies about her poor sister."
She sighed deeply (she had several kinds of sighs and this was the
hopeless kind) and added reflectively, "Sin on sin, wickedness on
wickedness! And the longer she lives the worse it will be. It would be
better for our Rita to be dead."

I told "Mademoiselle Therese" that it was really impossible to tell
whether she was more stupid or atrocious; but I wasn't really very much
shocked. These outbursts did not signify anything in Therese. One got
used to them. They were merely the expression of her rapacity and her
righteousness; so that our conversation ended by my asking her whether
she had any dinner ready for me that evening.

"What's the good of getting you anything to eat, my dear young Monsieur,"
she quizzed me tenderly. "You just only peck like a little bird. Much
better let me save the money for you." It will show the
super-terrestrial nature of my misery when I say that I was quite
surprised at Therese's view of my appetite. Perhaps she was right. I
certainly did not know. I stared hard at her and in the end she admitted
that the dinner was in fact ready that very moment.

The new young gentleman within Therese's horizon didn't surprise me very
much. Villarel would travel with some sort of suite, a couple of
secretaries at least. I had heard enough of Carlist headquarters to know
that the