youngest daughter, to the great delight of
her companions, blew him a kiss.

After visiting the vaquero in his room, and with his own hand applying
some native ointment to the various contusions and scratches which
recorded the late engagements of the unconscious Roberto, Don Jose
placed a gold coin in the hands of the Irish chamber-maid, and bidding
her look after the sleeper, he threw his serape over his shoulders and
passed into the road. The loungers on the veranda gazed at him
curiously, yet half acknowledged his usual serious salutation, and made
way for him with a certain respect. Avoiding the few narrow streets of
the little town, he pursued his way meditatively along the highroad,
returning to the hotel after an hour's ramble, as the evening
stage-coach had deposited its passengers and departed.

"There's a lady waiting to see you upstairs," said the landlord with a
peculiar smile. "She rather allowed it wasn't the proper thing to see
you alone, or she wasn't quite ekal to it, I reckon, for she got my
Polly to stand by her."

"Your Polly, good Jenkinson?" said Don Jose interrogatively.

"My darter, Don Jose."

"Ah, truly! I am twice blessed," said Don Jose, gravely ascending the
staircase.

On entering the room he perceived a tall, large-featured woman with an
extraordinary quantity of blond hair parted on one side of her broad
forehead, sitting upon the sofa. Beside her sat Polly Jenkinson, her
fresh, honest, and rather pretty face beaming with delighted
expectation and mischief. Don Jose saluted them with a formal
courtesy, which, however, had no trace of the fact that he really did
not remember anything of them.

"I called," said the large-featured woman with a voice equally
pronounced, "in reference to a request from you, which, though perhaps
unconventional in the extreme, I have been able to meet by the
intervention of this young lady's company. My name on this card may
not be familiar to you--but I am 'Dorothy Dewdrop.'"

A slight movement of abstraction and surprise passed over Don Jose's
face, but as quickly vanished as he advanced towards her and gracefully
raised the tips of her fingers to his lips. "Have I then, at last, the
privilege of beholding that most distressed and deeply injured of
women! Or is it but a dream!"

It certainly was not, as far as concerned the substantial person of the
woman before him, who, however, seemed somewhat uneasy under his words
as well as the dem