ly made, slim, and in
contour hardly more than a child; and yet she seemed to him very
mature, a practised hand, with very various knowledge deep in her eyes,
and a wide acquaintance behind her quiet lips. With her re-ordered
toilette she had taken on self-possession and dignity, a reserve which
baffled him. Without any more reason than this he felt for her a kind
of respect which nothing, certainly, in what he had seen of her
circumstances could justify. Yet he gave her her title--which marks
his feeling.

"Senorita," he said, "I wish to be of service to you. Command me.
Shall I take you back to Palencia?"

She answered him seriously. "I beg that you will not, sir."

"If you have friends----" he began, and she said at once, "I have none."

"Or parents----"

"None."

"Relatives----"

"None, none."

"Then your----"

"I know what you would say. I have no house."

"Then," said Manvers, looking vaguely over the plain, "what do you wish
me to do for you?"

She was now sitting by the roadside, very collectedly looking down at
her hands in her lap. "You will leave me here, if you must," she said;
"but I would ask your charity to take me a little farther from
Palencia. Nobody has ever been kind to me before."

She said this quite simply, as if stating a fact. He was moved.

"You were unhappy in Palencia?"

"Yes," she said, "I would rather be left here." The enormous plain of
Castile, treeless, sun-struck, empty of living thing, made her words
eloquent.

"Absurd," said Manvers. "If I leave you here you will die."

"In Palencia," said the girl, "I cannot die." And then her grave eyes
pierced him, and he knew what she meant.

"Great God!" said Manvers. "Then I shall take you to a convent."

She nodded her head. "Where you will, sir," she replied. Her gravity,
far beyond her seeming station, gave value to her confidence.

"That seems to me the best thing I can do with you," Manvers said; "and
if you don't shirk it, there is no reason why I should. Now, can you
stick on the saddle if I put you up?"

She nodded again. "Up you go then." He would have swung her up
sideways, lady-fashion; but she laughed and cried, "No, no," put a hand
on his shoulder, her left foot in the stirrup, and swung herself into
the saddle as neatly as a groom. There she sat astride, like a
circus-rider, and stuck her arm akimbo as she looked down for his
approval.

"Bravo," said Manvers. "You have been a-horsebac