Teresa, "you can divine my reason."

At these words, the man with the chin-beard was seized with a palsied
tremor. He seemed, for some seconds, to seek the utterance which his
fear denied him; and then, whipping sharply about, he took to his heels
at the most furious speed of running.

Harry was at first so taken aback that he neglected to pursue; and by
the time he had recovered his wits, his best expedition was only
rewarded by a glimpse of the man with the chin-beard mounting into a
hansom, which immediately after disappeared into the moving crowds of
Holborn.

Puzzled and dismayed by this unusual behaviour, Harry returned to the
house in Queen Square, and ventured for the first time to knock at the
fair Cuban's door. She bade him enter, and he found her kneeling with
rather a disconsolate air beside a brown wooden trunk.

"Senorita," he broke out, "I doubt whether that man's character is what
he wishes you to believe. His manner, when he found, and indeed when I
admitted, that I was following him, was not the manner of an honest
man."

"Oh!" she cried, throwing up her hands as in desperation, "Don Quixote,
Don Quixote, have you again been tilting against windmills?" And then,
with a laugh, "Poor soul!" she added, "how you must have terrified him!
For know that the Cuban authorities are here, and your poor Teresa may
soon be hunted down. Even yon humble clerk from my solicitor's office
may find himself at any moment the quarry of armed spies."

"A humble clerk!" cried Harry, "why, you told me yourself that he wished
to marry you!"

"I thought you English like what you call a joke," replied the lady
calmly. "As a matter of fact he is my lawyer's clerk, and has been here
to-night charged with disastrous news. I am in sore straits, Senor
Harry. Will you help me?"

At this most welcome word, the young man's heart exulted; and in the
hope, pride, and self-esteem, that kindled with the very thought of
service, he forgot to dwell upon the lady's jest. "Can you ask?" he
cried. "What is there that I can do? Only tell me that."

With signs of an emotion that was certainly unfeigned, the Fair Cuban
laid her hand upon the box. "This box," she said, "contains my jewels,
papers, and clothes; all, in a word, that still connects me with Cuba
and my dreadful past. They must now be smuggled out of England; or, by
the opinion of my lawyer, I am lost beyond remedy. To-morrow, on board
the Irish packet, a sure hand awaits the