"
"Look here, Enriquez," I said bluntly, "have you been serenading that
girl?"
He shrugged his shoulders without the least embarrassment, and said:
"Ah, yes. What would you? It is of a necessity."
"Well," I retorted, "then you ought to know that her uncle took it all to
himself--thought you some grateful Catholic pleased with his religious
tolerance."
He did not even smile. "BUENO," he said gravely. "That make something,
too. In thees affair it is well to begin with the duenna. He is the
duenna."
"And," I went on relentlessly, "her escort told her just now that your
exploit in the bull ring was only a trick to divert the bull, suggested
by the management."
"Bah! her escort is a geologian. Naturally, she is to him as a stone."
I would have continued, but a peon interrupted us at this moment with a
sign to Enriquez, who leaped briskly from the hammock, bidding me wait
his return from a messenger in the gateway.
Still unsatisfied of mind, I waited, and sat down in the hammock that
Enriquez had quitted. A scrap of paper was lying in its meshes, which
at first appeared to be of the kind from which Enriquez rolled his
cigarettes; but as I picked it up to throw it away, I found it was of
much firmer and stouter material. Looking at it more closely, I was
surprised to recognize it as a piece of the tinted drawing-paper torn
off the "block" that Miss Mannersley had used. It had been deeply
creased at right angles as if it had been folded; it looked as if it
might have been the outer half of a sheet used for a note.
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