t with it, expressively suggesting how she should
like to deal with such scoundrels.

'My child, my child, it has to be talked about. You don't seem quite in
your usual form to-day----'

'Oh, yes; I'm all right. But it sounds so dreadful. You don't really
think people are plotting to kill--him?'

'I don't say that they are; but from what I know of the scoundrels out
there who are opposed to him, it wouldn't one bit surprise me.'

'Oh!' The girl shuddered, and again the riding-whip flashed.

'But it may not be quite that, you know, little girl; there are shabby
tricks to be done short of that--there's spying and eavesdropping, to
find out, in advance, all he is going to do, and to thwart it----'

'Yes, yes, there might be that,' Dolores said, in a tone of relief--the
tone of one who, still fearing for the worst, is glad to be reminded
that there may, after all, be something not so bad as the very worst.

'I don't want his Excellency spied on in Paulo's Hotel,' Mr. Paulo
proudly said. 'It has not been the way of this hotel, and I do not mean
that it ever should be the way.'

'Not likely,' Dolores said, with a scornful toss of her head. 'The idea,
indeed, of Paulo's Hotel being a resort of _mouchards_ and spies, to
find out the secrets of illustrious exiles who were sheltered as
guests!'

'Well, that's what I say. Now I have my suspicions of this Captain
Sarrasin. I don't know what he wants here, and why, if he is on the side
of his Excellency, he don't boldly attend him every day.'

'I think you are wrong about him, dear,' Dolores quietly said. 'You may
be right enough in your general suspicions and alarms and all that, and
I dare say you _are_ quite right; but I am sure you are wrong about him.
Anyhow, you keep a sharp look-out everywhere else, and leave me to find
out all about _him_.'

'Little girl, how can you find out all about him?'

'Leave that to me. I'll talk to him, and I'll make him talk to me. I
never saw a man yet whose character I couldn't read like a printed book
after I have had a little direct and confidential talk with him.' Miss
Dolores tossed her head with the air of one who would say, 'Ask me no
questions about the secret of my art; enough for you to know that the
art is there.'

'Well, some of you women have wonderful gifts, I know,' her father said,
half admiringly, half reflectively, proud of his daughter, and wondering
how women came to have such gifts.

While they were speaking,