and visited by changing lights; her hair was partly covered by a
lace mantilla, through which her arms, bare to the shoulder,
gleamed white; her figure, full and soft in all the womanly
contours, was yet alive and active, light with excess of life, and
slender by grace of some divine proportion.

'You do not like my cigarrito, Senor?' she asked. 'Yet it is
better made than yours.' At that she laughed, and her laughter
trilled in his ear like music; but the next moment her face fell.
'I see,' she cried. 'It is my manner that repels you. I am too
constrained, too cold. I am not,' she added, with a more engaging
air, 'I am not the simple English maiden I appear.'

'Oh!' murmured Harry, filled with inexpressible thoughts.

'In my own dear land,' she pursued, 'things are differently
ordered. There, I must own, a girl is bound by many and rigorous
restrictions; little is permitted her; she learns to be distant,
she learns to appear forbidding. But here, in free England--oh,
glorious liberty!' she cried, and threw up her arms with a gesture
of inimitable grace--'here there are no fetters; here the woman may
dare to be herself entirely, and the men, the chivalrous men--is it
not written on the very shield of your nation, honi soit? Ah, it
is hard for me to learn, hard for me to dare to be myself. You
must not judge me yet awhile; I shall end by conquering this
stiffness, I shall end by growing English. Do I speak the language
well?'

'Perfectly--oh, perfectly!' said Harry, with a fervency of
conviction worthy of a graver subject.