ccident of my
fancy and the twisted lights, I couldn't determine. But, looking in
her face, I thought, "Oh, surely Mr. Dingley is right. It isn't that
she is ill, but only that she wants to talk with me alone." Like her
hand, her voice was soft and warm.

"You are very kind," she said. There was hardly a trace of accent in
her speech, only a delicate precision that made it delightful. "You
see, I have been sick, and am yet too weak to go out upon the street.
It is why I have given you the trouble to come to me." And still
keeping my hand she led me to a chair and gently, prettily pushed me
into it. There was something persuasive in her very touch. Then,
taking her seat again, "Maria, _prondo_!" she cried; and the maid
coming forward gathered up the mass of hair, twisted it deftly into a
sort of crown around her head, filling it with gold-colored hair-pins,
tucked into its coil a single tuberose; then collecting the combs and
brushes went softly out of the room.

The Spanish Woman sat there, resting her chin in her hand, looking at
me with a pleasant rather smiling expression; and I thought she was a
great deal less overwhelming than I had expected, though she was even
more beautiful. "You have seen Mr. Montgomery?" she began. I thought
it was only a question in form.

I said, "Oh, yes, I first saw him several years ago, dancing at a ball."

She gave me a keen glance. "Yes, and later than that?"

"Then, then," I stammered, for I was at a loss to know whether she knew
what my evidence was to be, "then once or twice on the street, and
yesterday in court."

"Well, and what do you think of him?"

"Why I--I don't know him."

She made an amused little sound in her throat. "Yet you have seen him
three times. Once would have been enough. Surely you can tell me at
least one thing--do you think he looks like a murderer?"

"Oh, no!" I murmured.

Her eyes never left me. "But you do not think well of him; he is
perhaps repulsive to you?"

"Oh, no!" I whispered. There was a painful tightness around my heart,
and my head felt on fire. It was not the Spanish Woman but I who
seemed to be telling the story.

She gave a quick nod, as if my answers thus far had satisfied her.
"You do not believe him to be a murderer, you do not even think him
unpleasant, and yet you will go into the court and swear away his
freedom--perhaps his life?"

"I said I thought he did not look like a murderer," I desperately
insis