a bouquet and a fan to match their dress presented to them every
morning, and that the gentlemen had a champagne cocktail sent to
their rooms before breakfast? "Just you come, Miss, and bring your
father and your brothers, and stay a week and you'll see,"
responded Aladdin, gallantly. "Hold on! What's your father's
first name? I'll send a team over there for you to-morrow." "And
is it true that you frightened the handsome Captain Carroll away
from Amita?" said Dolores Briones, over the edge of her fan to
Raymond. "Perfectly," said Raymond, with ingenuous frankness. "I
made it a matter of life or death. He was a soldier, and naturally
preferred the former as giving him a better chance for promotion."
"Ah! we thought it was Maruja you liked best." "That was two years
ago," said Raymond, gravely. "And you Americanos can change in
that time?" "I have just experienced that it can be done in less,"
he responded, over the fan, with bewildering significance. Nor
were these confidences confined to only one nationality. "I always
thought you Spanish gentlemen were very dark, and wore long
mustaches and a cloak," said pretty little Miss Walker, gazing
frankly into the smooth round face of the eldest Pacheco--"why, you
are as fair as I am," "Eaf I tink that, I am for ever mizzarable,"
he replied, with grave melancholy. In the dead silence that
followed he was enabled to make his decorous point. "Because I
shall not ezeape ze fate of Narcissus." Mr. Buchanan, with the
unrestrained and irresponsible enjoyment of a traveler, entered
fully into the spirit of the scene. He even found words of praise
for Aladdin, whose extravagance had at first seemed to him almost
impious. "Eh, but I'm not prepared to say he is a fool, either,"
he remarked to his friend the San Francisco banker. "Those who try
to pick him up for one," returned the banker, "will find themselves
mistaken. His is the prodigality that loosens others' purse-