.

In the hotel parlour one dance followed another. Everybody complained
gaily of the bad weather.

Shortly before the middle of Lent there arrived a Parisian family at the
hotel, composed of a mother with two daughters and a companion.

This family might be considered a representation of the _entente
cordiale_. The mother was French, the widow first of a Spaniard, Senor
Sandoval, by whom she had had one daughter, and then of an Englishman,
Mr. Dawson, by whom she had had another.

Mme. Dawson was a fat, imposing lady, with tremendous brilliants in
her ears and somewhat theatrical clothes; Mile. Sandoval, the elder
daughter, was of Arab type, with black eyes, an aquiline nose, pale
rose-coloured lips, and a malicious smile, full of mystery, as if it
revealed restless and diabolical intentions.

Her half-sister, Mile. Dawson, was a contrast, being the perfect type of
a grotesque Englishwoman, with a skin like a beet, and freckles.

The governess, Mile. Cadet, was not at all pretty, but she was gay and
sprightly. These four women seated in the middle of the dining-room, a
little stiff, a little out of temper, seemed, particularly the first
few days, to defy anybody that might have wished to approach them. They
replied coolly to the formal bows of the other guests, and none of them
cared to take part in the dances.

The handsome Signor Carminatti shot incendiary glances at Mlle. de
Sandoval; but she remained scornful; so one evening, as the Dawson
family came out of the dining-room, the Neapolitan waved his hand toward
them and said:

"I protestante della simpatia."

Caesar made much of this phrase, because it was apt, and he took it
that Carminatti considered the ladies protestants against friendliness,
because they had paid no attention to the charms that he displayed in
their honour.

_CONSEQUENCES OF THE RAIN_

Two or three days later Mme. Dawson bowed to Caesar on passing him in
the hall, and asked him:

"Aren't you Spanish?"

"Yes, madam."

"But don't you speak French?"

"Very little."

"My daughter is Spanish too."

"She is a perfect Spanish type."

"Really?" asked the daughter referred to.

"Thoroughly."

"Then I am happy."

In the evening, after dinner, Caesar again joined Mme. Dawson and began
to talk with her. The Frenchwoman had a tendency to philosophize, to
criticize, and to find out everything. She had no great capacity for
admiration, and nothing she saw succeeded in draggi