upon one cheek—picking her up in her father's house and bestowing kisses and presents upon her. She was a little dark flower of five.
But Carmelita did not grow older quite as fast as Señor Mendoza. Don Pablo, it was said in Buenos Aires, lived his life to the full in the unstinted Spanish fashion. An unattached bachelor of unlimited means, he was a favorite among the aristocratic bon vivants of the Argentine capital, a free spender, a frequenter of gambling clubs and the racetrack. His hair grayed rapidly, his never very stalwart frame bent under the strain his mode of living was placing upon it. Even at forty-five, when a man is at his prime, the rich Don Pablo, drinking wine in the study of Don Caesar de Cordoba, Carmelita's father, would wheeze and make much ado as he attempted to rise from his favorite easy chair. Nevertheless, Señor de Cordoba would never permit any criticism of his crony. Their friendship had been one of the few points of mild contention between the worthy señor and his wife, who had died when Carmelita was eight. She had never been able to understand why her husband, a man of the most austere habits, should be filled with such a passionate loyalty and liking for a shallow pleasure-seeker of Mendoza's rather streaky reputation. She admitted that the man was a sprightly, intel-
