this afternoon. I hope you have been well employed in the mean while?"
"Delightfully to myself, Señor," said the Don, who, enraged at being interrupted, if not discovered, was as ready to fight as Cary, but disliked, of course, an explosion as much as he did; "and to others, I doubt not."
"So the ladies say," quoth St. Leger. "He has been making them all cry with one of his stories, and robbing us meanwhile of the pleasure we had hoped for from some of his Spanish songs."
"The devil take Spanish songs!" said Cary, in a low voice, but loud enough for the Spaniard. Don Guzman clapt his hand on his sword-hilt instantly.
"Lieutenant Cary," said Sir Richard in a stern voice; "the wine has surely made you forget yourself!"
"As sober as yourself, most worshipful knight; but if you want a Spanish song, here's one; and a very scurvy one it is, like its subject—
"Don Desperado
Walked on the Prado,
And there he met his enemy.
He pulled out a knife, a,
And let out his life, a,
And fled for his own across the sea.
And he bowed low to the Spaniard.
The insult was too gross to require any spluttering.
"Señor Cary, we meet?"
"I thank your quick apprehension, Don Guzman Maria Magdalena Sotomayor de Soto. When, where, and with what weapons?"
"For God's sake, gentlemen! Nephew Arthur, Cary is your guest; do you know the meaning of this?"
St. Leger was silent. Cary answered for him.
"An old Irish quarrel, I assure you, sir. A matter of years' standing. In unlacing the Señor's helmet, the evening that he was taken prisoner, I was unlucky enough to twitch his mustachios. You recollect the fact, of course, Señor?"
"Perfectly," said the Spaniard; and then, half-amused and half-pleased, in spite of his bitter wrath, at Cary's quickness and delicacy in shielding Rose, he bowed, and
"And it gives me much pleasure to find that he whom I trust to have the pleasure of killing to-morrow morning is a gentleman whose nice sense of honor renders him thoroughly worthy of the sword of a De Soto."
Cary bowed in return, while Sir Richard, who saw plainly enough that the excuse was feigned, shrugged his shoulders.
"What weapons, Señor?" asked Will again.
"I should have preferred a horse and pistols," said Don Guzman after a moment, half to himself, and in Spanish; "they make surer work of it than bodkins; but" (with a sigh and one of his smiles) "beggars must not be choosers."
