but not really troublesome for another
twenty-four hours at least; and by then they would be well away.

This joyous confidence of his was his first misfortune. The next was
that his good spirits were also shared by Miss Bishop, and that she
bore no rancour. The two things conjoined to make the delay that in its
consequences was so deplorable.

"Good-morning, sir," she hailed him pleasantly. "It's close upon a month
since last I saw you."

"Twenty-one days to the hour," said he. "I've counted them."

"I vow I was beginning to believe you dead."

"I have to thank you for the wreath."

"The wreath?"

"To deck my grave," he explained.

"Must you ever be rallying?" she wondered, and looked at him gravely,
remembering that it was his rallying on the last occasion had driven her
away in dudgeon.

"A man must sometimes laugh at himself or go mad," said he. "Few realize
it. That is why there are so many madmen in the world."

"You may laugh at yourself all you will, sir. But sometimes I think you
laugh at me, which is not civil."

"Then, faith, you're wrong. I laugh only at the comic, and you are not
comic at all."

"What am I, then?" she asked him, laughing.

A moment he pondered her, so fair and fresh to behold, so entirely
maidenly and yet so entirely frank and unabashed.

"You are," he said, "the niece of the man who owns me his slave." But he
spoke lightly. So lightly that she was encouraged to insistence.

"Nay, sir, that is an evasion. You shall answer me truthfully this
morning."

"Truthfully? To answer you at all is a labour. But to answer truthfully!
Oh, well, now, I should say of you that he'll be lucky who counts you
his friend." It was in his mind to add more. But he left it there.

"That's mighty civil," said she. "You've a nice taste in compliments,
Mr. Blood. Another in your place...."

"Faith, now, don't I know what another would have said? Don't I know my
fellow-man at all?"

"Sometimes I think you do, and sometimes I think you don't. Anyway, you
don't know your fellow-woman. There was that affair of the Spaniards."

"Will ye never forget it?"

"Never."

"Bad cess to your memory. Is there no good in me at all that you could
be dwelling on instead?"

"Oh, several things."

"For instance, now?" He was almost eager.

"You speak excellent Spanish."

"Is that all?" He sank back into dismay.

"Where did you learn it? Have you been in Spain?"

"That I have. I was two years in a S