obin Hood._

"Oh, oh, now he's coming to eat _us_!" Jacqueline gasped.

The fierce stranger, however, seemed undecided. His brow furrowed, and
for the moment he only stared. Jacqueline peeped through the lashes
curtaining her eyes. She wanted to see his face, and she saw one of bold
lines. The chin was a hard right angle. The mouth was a cruel line
between heavily sensuous lips. The nose was a splendid line, and a very
assertive and insolent nose altogether. The forehead was rugged, with a
free curving sweep. Here there would have been a certain nobility, only
its slope was just a hint too low. The skin was tawny. The moustache was
black and bristling, as was also the thick hair, which lay back like
grass before a breeze. The shaggy eyebrows were parted by deep clefts,
the dark corrugations of frowning. One wondered if the man did not turn
the foreboding scowl on and off by design. But all these were matters
that fitted in with the other striking "properties," and Jacqueline was
fairly well satisfied with her Fra Diavolo. As she declared to herself,
here was the very dramatic presence to mount upon a war charger!

[Illustration: "RODRIGO GALAN"
"The fierce stranger, however, seemed undecided. His brow furrowed,
and for the moment he only stared"]

Now when Jacqueline peeped--there was something irresistible about
it--the furrows in the black-beetled brow smoothed themselves out,
whether the stranger meant them to or not. And a vague resolve took hold
on him, and quickened his breath. Her glance might have been
invitation--Tampico was not a drawing room--but still he hesitated.
There was a certain hauteur in the set of the demoiselle's head, which
outbalanced the mischief in her eyes. He felt an indefinable severity in
her tempting beauty, and this was new to his philosophy of woman. But as
he drank in further details, his resolve stiffened. That Grecian bend to
her crisp skirt was evidently an extreme from the Rue de la Paix,
foretelling the end of stupendous flounces. Then there was the tilt to
the large hat, and the veil falling to the level of the eyes, and the
disquieting charm of both. The wine-red lips had a way of smiling and
curling at the same time. And still again there was that line of the
neck, from the shoulder up to where it hid under the soft, old-gold
tendrils, and that line was a thing of beauty and seductive mystery. The
dreadful ranchero went down in humility before the splendor of the
tantaliz