wanted to get away from
the others. You two who are so fond of each other are a very rare
instance. Is it frequent in Spain that brothers and sisters like one
another?"

"Yes, there are instances of it," answered Caesar, laughing.

Mrs. Marchmont arrived, accompanied by an old man who evidently was her
father, and two other men. Susanna was most smart; she greeted Laura and
Caesar very affably, and presented her father, Mr. Russell; then she
presented an English author, tall, skinny, with blue eyes, a white
beard, and hair like a halo; and then a young Englishman from the
Embassy, a very distinguished person named Kennedy, who was a Catholic.

_TEA_

After the introductions they passed into the dining-room, which was
most impressive. It was an exhibition of very smart women, some of
them ideally beautiful, and idle men. All about them resounded a nasal
English of the American sort.

Susanna Marchmont served the tea and did the honours to her guests.
They all talked French, excepting Mr. Russell, who once in a long while
uttered some categorical monosyllable in his own language.

Mr. Russell was not of the classic Yankee type; he looked like a vulgar
Englishman. He was a serious man, with a short moustache, grey-headed,
with three or four gold teeth.

What to Caesar seemed wonderful in this gentleman was his economy of
words. There was not one useless expression in his vocabulary, and
not the slightest redundancy; whatever partook of merit, prestige, or
nobility was condensed, for him, to the idea of value; whatever partook
of arrangement, cleanliness, order, was condensed to the word "comfort";
so that Mr. Russell, with a very few words, had everything specified.

To Susanna, imbued with her preoccupation in supreme _chic_, her father
no doubt did not seem a completely decorative father; but he gave Caesar
the impression of a forceful man.

Near them, at a table close by, was a little blond man, with a hooked
nose and a scanty imperial, in company with a fat lady. They bowed to
Marchmont and his wife.

"That gentleman looks like a Jew," said Caesar.

"He is," replied Marchmont, "that is Senor Pereyra, a rich Jew; of
Portuguese origin, I think."

"How quickly you saw it!" exclaimed Susanna.

"He has that air of a sick goat, so frequent in Jews."

"His wife has nothing sickly about her, or thin either," remarked Laura.

"No," said Caesar; "his wife represents another Biblical type; one of
the fat ki