``You are not offended with me?'' she asked.

Clay turned and frowned, and then smiled in a puzzled way and
stretched out his hand toward the equestrian statue in the plaza.

``Andulla or Anduella, the Treaty-Maker, as they call him, was
born in 1700,'' he said; ``he was a most picturesque sort of a
chap, and freed this country from the yoke of Spain. One of the
stories they tell of him gives you a good idea of his
character.'' And so, without any change of expression or
reference to what had just passed between them, Clay
continued through the remainder of their stay on the balcony to
discourse in humorous, graphic phrases on the history of Olancho,
its heroes, and its revolutions, the buccaneers and pirates of
the old days, and the concession-hunters and filibusters of the
present. It was some time before Miss Langham was able to give
him her full attention, for she was considering whether he could
be so foolish as to have taken offence at what she said, and
whether he would speak of it again, and in wondering whether a
personal basis for conversation was not, after all, more
entertaining than anecdotes of the victories and heroism of dead
and buried Spaniards.

``That Captain Stuart,'' said Hope to her sister, as they drove
home together through the moonlight, ``I like him very much. He
seems to have such a simple idea of what is right and good. It
is like a child talking. Why, I am really much older than he is
in everything but years--why is that?''

``I suppose it's because we always talk before you as though you