e would. Once or twice she had caught
that look of Uncle John in his eyes; the laughing, critical, yet kindly
scrutiny that always made her feel like a little girl, and a silly girl
at that. Was that what she had seemed to Captain Delmonte? Of course it
was. She had had the great, the crowning opportunity of her life, of
doing homage to a real hero (she forgot good General Sevillo, who had
been a hero in a quiet and business-like way for sixty years), and she
had lost the opportunity.

It was a very subdued Rita who returned to the house that evening. At
the edge of the wood they were met by Don Annunzio, who stood as before,
smoking his long black cigar, and scrutinising the road and the
surrounding country. A wave of his hand told them that all was well, and
they stepped quickly across the road, and in another minute were on the
verandah.

Don Annunzio followed them with an elaborate air of indifference; but
once seated in his great chair, he began to speak eagerly, gesticulating
with his cigar.

"_Dios!_ Prudencia, you had an inspiration from heaven this day. What I
have been through! the sole comfort is that I have lost twenty pounds at
least, from sheer anxiety. Imagine that you had not been gone an hour,
when up they ride, the _guerrilla_ that was reported to us yesterday. At
their head, that pestiferous Col. Diego Moreno. He dismounts, demands
coffee, bananas, what there is. I go to get them; and, the saints
aiding me, I meet in the face the pretty Manuela. Another instant, and
she would have been on the verandah, would have been seen by these
swine, female curiosity having led her to imagine a necessary errand in
that direction. I seize this charming child by the shoulders, I push her
into her room. I tell her, 'Thou hast a dangerous fever. Go to thy bed
on the instant, it is a matter of thy life.'

"My countenance is such that she obeys without a word. She is an
admirable creature! Beauty, in the female sex--"

"Do go on, Noonsey," said his wife, good-naturedly, "and never mind
about beauty now. Land knows we have got other things to think about."

"It is true, it is true, my own!" replied the amiable fat man. "I return
to the verandah. This man is striding up and down, cutting at my poor
vines with his apoplexy of a whip. He calls me; I stand before him
thus, civil but erect.

"'Have you any strangers here, Don Annunzio?'

"'No, Senor Colonel.'

"It is true, senorita. To make a stranger of you, so f