toward him. I
continued to walk on to the gateway, where I bade Enriquez a hurried
good-by, alleging the sudden remembrance of another engagement, but
without appearing to recognize the girl, who was moving away when, to
my further discomfiture, the rascal stopped me with an appealing wink,
threw his arms around my neck, whispered hoarsely in my ear, "Ah! you
see--you comprehend--but you are the mirror of discretion!" and returned
to Jocasta. But whether this meant that he had received a message from
Miss Mannersley, or that he was trying to suborn her maid to carry one,
was still uncertain. He was capable of either. During the next two
or three weeks I saw him frequently; but as I had resolved to try the
effect of ignoring Miss Mannersley in our conversation, I gathered
little further of their relations, and, to my surprise, after one or two
characteristic extravagances of allusion, Enriquez dropped the subject,
too. Only one afternoon, as we were parting, he said carelessly: "My
friend, you are going to the casa of Mannersley tonight. I too have the
honor of the invitation. But you will be my Mercury--my Leporello--you
will take of me a message to thees Mees Boston, that I am crushed,
desolated, prostrate, and flabbergasted--that I cannot arrive, for I
have of that night to sit up with the grand-aunt of my brother-in-law,
who has a quinsy to the death. It is sad."

This was the first indication I had received of Miss Mannersley's
advances. I was equally surprised at Enriquez' refusal.

"Nonsense!" I said bluntly. "Nothing keeps you from going."

"My friend," returned Enriquez, with a sudden lapse into languishment
that seemed to make him absolutely infirm, "it is everything that
shall restrain me. I am not strong. I shall become weak of the knee and
tremble under the eye of Mees Boston. I shall precipitate myself to the
geologian by the throat. Ask me another conundrum that shall be easy."

He seemed idiotically inflexible, and did not go. But I did. I found
Miss Mannersley exquisitely dressed and looking singularly animated and
pretty. The lambent glow of her inscrutable eye as she turned toward me
might have been flattering but for my uneasiness in regard to Enriquez.
I delivered his excuses as naturally as I could. She stiffened for an
instant, and seemed an inch higher. "I am so sorry," she said at last in
a level voice. "I thought he would have been so amusing. Indeed, I had
hoped we might try an old Moorish d