f the
_Savonarola_ aren't nearly so high as the level of the bluff. I love a
sailing-ship, and on the way back I met Senor Rey in his wheel-chair,
and told him how the wonderful little harbor and his thorough-bred,
lying there, had appealed to me. He inclined his head benignly. His
yacht, I said, had the effective lines of her namesake's profile--and
that pleased him. Followed, a technical discussion of different
sailing-ships that once swept the waters of the world, I furnishing
enthusiasm and a text-book inquiry now and then. This brought not only
an invitation to sail within a few days, but also an invitation to a
private dinner this evening in the Flamingo Room, 'with Senora Rey and
a few most cherished guests.' And--I must not forget--the Senor
informed me that his wife was very fond of me....

"I observed that the 'Flamingo Room' had a most enticing sound. He
hoped I would find it so; said the idea was his own, and that, to him,
the tint of a flamingo feather was the fairest of all tints--save one,
to be found in the cheeks of an American girl. I answered that it was
very clear to me now whose sense of beauty had made _The Pleiad_ and
its gardens the rarest delight of my travels."

Miss Mallory regarded Bedient's amusement appreciatively for a moment,
and went on swiftly:

"Then I walked beside his wheel-chair through the shadowy, scented
paths, and presently I mentioned you and Colonel Rizzio among the
interesting people I had met. He declared you were a true
gentleman--spoke feelingly--a stranger at _The Pleiad_, though not to
the Island. I explained how you had kept aloof on the ship coming down,
how you seemed to be the prey of some devouring grief.... All that I
said, he regarded with that terribly bright attention of his. It made
me think of a pack of hounds tossing and tearing at a morsel, the way
his faculties caught my sentences, hounds playing a hare at the end of
a run. Oh, devious and winding are the ways of the Spaniard--and past
finding out! But I frankly confessed my interest in you, and that you
were absolutely self-contained; indeed, it was because of that I
appealed to him. I am sure he found that my sayings balanced in the
most sensitive scales of his mind; and decided I was too young to be
artistic with the fine tools of untruth.

"Finally, I asked about war, told him the New York papers predicted
another war in Equatoria, and that I had never seen one. The Senor
declared he was very sorry