Love me an hour;"

sang Lolita, and his eyes turned to the two at the gate, still
chaperoned by the faithful parrot. In them was a flash like fire on
steel, as they rested on Bob Flick. Then he turned again to Mrs.
Gallito. "Forget it," he said again, as he rose to take his leave; "and
believe that I have, too."

But his musings on his way back to the hotel would certainly not have
proved calming to that lady could she have but known them.

"Gosh!" he muttered, "and I thought it had broke, this blessed blind
luck of mine, when I heard 'em mention Colina; but it's holding after
all, it's holding. I guess what I know now about the whereabouts of
Crop-eared José just about offsets anything Pop Gallito may know about
me and anything that Mr. Bob Flick can discover."




CHAPTER III


Pearl's father came the next day, an older man than Hanson had imagined
and of a different type. There was no smack of the circus ring about
him, no swagger of the footlights; nor any hint of the emotional, gay
temperament supposed to be the inheritance of southern blood. He was a
saturnine, gnarled old Spaniard with lean jaws and beetling brows. His
skin was like parchment. It clung to his bones and fell in heavy
wrinkles in the hollows of his cheeks and about his mouth; and his dark