come
near us?"

Inez, who, with her sister, stood eagerly intent behind the chair in
which their mother was seated, laid her hand soothingly upon the
Senora's shoulder.

"Is it best," she asked, "to turn the young man away without learning
what he wishes to do? Living in Porto Cabello, he may know something
we could not know. Did you find out," she asked the Consul, "in what
way Mr. Forrester wishes to help us?"

"No," confessed Captain Codman, "I did not. I was so taken aback," he
explained; "he was so ignorant, so cocksure, that he made me mad. And
I just ordered him out, and I told him, told him for his own good, of
course," the Consul added hastily, "that he talked too much."

With critical eyes Inez regarded her old friend doubtfully, and shook
her head at him.

"And how did he take that?" she asked.

"He told me," answered the Consul, painfully truthful, "that my parrot
had said the same thing, and that we might both be wrong."

There was an instant's silence, and then Inez laughed. In shocked
tones her mother exclaimed reprovingly.

"But he comes here," protested the girl, "to do us a service, the
greatest service, and he is ordered away. Why should we refuse to let
him help us, to let any one help us. We should make the most of every
chance that offers."

Senora Rojas turned in her chair and looked steadily at her daughter.

"Your advice is good, Inez," she said, "but it comes strangely from
you."

At the same moment, as though conjured by her thought, a servant
announced Colonel Vega, and that gentleman, with several of those who
had lunched with him at the Cafe Ducrot, entered the room. In alarm
Captain Codman waited only to shake hands with the visitors and then
precipitately departed. But in the meeting of the exiles there was
nothing that would have compromised him. The reception of Colonel Vega
by the three women was without outward significance. They greeted
him, not as a leader of their conspiracy, but as they might have
received any friend who, after an absence, had returned to them. When
he bent over the hand of Inez he raised his liquid eyes to hers, but
the girl welcomed him simply, without confusion.

He decided that her mother could not as yet have told her of his
wishes. Had she done so he felt sure, in view of the honor he would
pay her, her embarrassment at meeting him would have been apparent to
all.

Vega himself elected to tell the ladies of the attack made upon him at
the