hought
of it.

The two ladies looked at their preserver standing in the middle of the
road--fair and straight and tall, like a Greek god, but with a terrible
fury blazing in his dark blue eyes.

"You are not hurt, I trust?" he asked, his breath coming quickly, for he
was in a towering passion. He was not speaking to the darker of the two
girls at all; in fact, he was unconscious of her presence. He was
standing by Adrienne Cartuccio's side, watching the faint color steal
again into her cheeks, and the terror dying out of her eyes, to be
replaced by a far softer light. Her black lace wrap, which she had been
wearing in Spanish fashion, had fallen a little back from her head, and
the moonlight was gleaming upon her ruddy golden hair, all wavy and
disarranged, throwing into soft relief the outline of her slim, girlish
figure, her heaving bosom, and the exquisite transparency of her
complexion. She stood there like an offended young queen, passionately
wrathful with the men who had dared to lay their coarse hands upon her,
yet feeling all a woman's gratitude to their preserver. Her eyes were
flashing like stars, and her brows were bent, but as she looked into his
face her expression softened. Of the two sensations gratitude was the
stronger.

"You are not hurt?" he repeated "I am sorry that I did not get here
sooner, before that fellow touched you."

She held out her hand to him with a little impetuous movement.

"Thanks to you. No, Signor," she said, her eyes suddenly filling with
tears. "Oh, how grateful we are, are we not, Margharita?"

"Indeed, indeed we are. The Signor has saved us from a terrible danger."

He laughed a little awkwardly. Where is the Englishman who likes to be
thanked?

"It is nothing. The fellows were arrant cowards. But what was the
carriage doing here?"

He pointed along the road. Already the clumsy vehicle had become a black
speck in the distance, swaying heavily from side to side from the pace
at which it was being driven, and almost enveloped in a cloud of dust.

Adrienne shook her head. Margharita had turned away, with her face
buried in her hands.

"I cannot imagine. Perhaps they were brigands, and intended to carry us
off for a ransom."

The Englishman shrugged his shoulders.

"Odd sort of bandits," he remarked. "Why, they hadn't the pluck of a
chicken between them, especially this one."

He touched the prostrate figure with his foot, and the two girls
shuddered.

"He is--