cochero_.

* * * * *

It was not a long ride nor a long walk, though the sun was insufferable.
The capital of Paraguay is not large. It is a sleepy, somnolent little
town in which the most pretentious building was begun as the
Presidential Palace and wound up as the home of a bank. But there are
bullet marks on the facade of the _Museo Nacional_, and there is still
an empty pedestal here and there throughout the city where the heroes of
last year's revolution, in bronze, have been pulled down and the heroes
of this year's uprising of the people have not yet been set up. Red
tiled roofs give the city color, and the varying shades of its populace
give it variety, and the fact that below the whiter class of inhabitants
_Guarani_ is spoken instead of Spanish adds to the individuality of its
effect.

But the house into which the carriage turned could have been built in
Rio or Buenos Aires without comment on its architecture. It had the
outer bleakness of most private homes of South America, but if it was
huge and its windows were barred, the patio into which Bell was ushered
by a bewildered and suspicious major-domo made up in color and in charm
for all that the exterior lacked.

A fountain played amid flowers, and macaws and parrots and myriad other
caged birds hung in their cages about the colonnade around the court,
and Bell found Paula being introduced to a pale young man in the stiff
collar and unspeakably formal morning clothes of the South American who
is of the upper class.

"Jaime," said Isabella, beaming. "And this is Charles, whom Paula is to
marry! It is romantic! It is fascinating! And I depend on you to give
him clothes so that all our servants won't stare goggle-eyed at him, and
I am going to take Paula off at once and dress her! They are our guests!
And, Jaime, you must threaten all the servants terribly so they will
keep it very secret--that we have two such terrible people with us."

* * * * *

Paula smiled at Bell, and he saw that she felt utterly safe and wholly
at peace. Something was hammering at Bell's brain, warning him, and he
could not understand what it was. But he exchanged the decorous limp
handshake which is conventional south of Panama, and followed his
unsmiling host to rooms where a servant laid out a bewildering
assortment of garments. They were all rather formal, the sort of
clothing that is held to be fitting for a man o