ttendant.

"I wonder who lives in the castle," she responded to his mood of
playfulness. "_Our_ castle. We should dispossess them."

"Lets," proposed her father.

There was an inn in the village, kept by a ravishingly plump landlord of
sixty who wore a short velvet jacket. He informed the travellers that
the diminutive white castle was not only vacant, but to let, being the
property of a mad Englishman who had bought it to live in while writing
a book, and having finished the book had departed. Mr. Rose regarded his
daughter speculatively.

"We have been going from one place to another for five months, and we
have got to put in six more," he said with brief decisiveness. "I mean
to stay on this side of the water until fall. Do you want to try living
here for a while, or would you rather keep moving?"

"Let us stay here," Flavia voted eagerly. "Dear, I am so tired of
hotels."

Mr. Rose studied her as she stood, slim and frail, before him, her large
eyes fixed on his.

"I guess we are tired of more than that, you and I," he pronounced. "But
I'll run up and see if the place can be made fit to live in. You had
better rest here, in the shade; Frederick will take care of you and
Lenoir is within call. Here, senor, set a chair here under these trees."

She moved to the seat placed for her by the deferential host, and
watched her father's departure up the winding road. They were both
thinking of Corrie, lacking whom all places were blank, with whom, in
one winter's enthusiasm, they had studied this soft Spanish tongue they
now used without him. They had planned a trip to Puerto Rico, then, that
never had been taken. But Flavia also was thinking of Allan
Gerard--Allan Gerard, who loved Isabel and for whose sake Flavia carried
a double sorrow, his and her own. As he had found excuses in his mind
for her apparent failure of him, so she on her part never had blamed him
for what she considered her own misunderstanding of his purpose. They
were not given to the small vice of ready condemnation. There is no
comfort in blaming the one loved, where the love is great.

A murmur of wondering dismay aroused Flavia from her musing, a sound
scarcely louder than the murmur of the bees busied among the heavy
waxen-white lemon-blossoms overhead. She lifted her chin from her hand,
and saw a brown-haired, brown-skinned, brown-eyed girl standing on the
path, gazing at the huge dog that barred her passage.

"Pray do not be frightened,"