tine la Nina!

CHAPTER XXXVI.

VALENTINE LA NINA

The girl stood smiling upon the young man, a spray of the great scarlet
blossom of the pomegranate freshly plucked and held easily in her hand.
She had broken it from the tree in the courtyard as she came in. The
flowers showed like handfuls of blood splashed upon the bosom and neck
of her white clinging robe.

"You are very beautiful," said the Abbe John, his voice no more than a
hoarse gasp; "what are you doing here in this place? Tell me your name.
I seem to have seen you long ago, in dreams. But I have forgotten--I
forget everything!"

Then, without taking her eyes, mystically amber and gold, softly
caressing as the sea and as changeful, from the young man's face, she
beckoned him forward.

"We shall speak more at ease in another place," she said. And held out
her hand to him, carelessly, palm downwards, as if he had been her
brother, and they were playing some lightheart game, or taking positions
for an old-time dance of woven hands and measured paces.

Valentine la Nina led John d'Albret into a summer parlour, equally
secure from escape, being surrounded by the high fortress walls of the
Hotel of the Inquisition, but full of rich twilight, of flowers, of
broidery, and of faint wafted perfumes from forgotten shawl or dropped
kerchief, which told of a woman's abiding there.

"Now," said Valentine la Nina, throwing herself back luxuriously on a
wide divan of Seville, her hands clasped behind her head, "tell me all
there is to tell--keep back nothing. Then we will take counsel what is
best to be done! I have not forgotten, if you have!"

And John d'Albret, exhausted by the ceaseless searching of the Eyes into
his soul, and the need of the dark which would not come, told her all.
To which Valentine la Nina listened, and saw the fear fade out and the
reasonable man return. But as John d'Albret spoke, something moved
strangely in the depths of her own heart. Her face flushed; her temples
throbbed; her hands grew chill.

"And you have done this for the sake of a woman--of a girl?" she said.

"For Claire Agnew's sake," the Abbe John answered, still uncertainly;
"so would any one--any one who loved her!"

Valentine la Nina smiled, stirring uneasily on her divan, and as she
smiled she sighed also, leaning forward, her great eyes on the youth.

"Any one?" she repeated, "any one who loved her! Aye, it may be so. She
is a happy girl. I have found none suc