“Ah, what a mistake!” murmured the vrow, returning placidly to her ministrations. “Alas, what a cut!—it must be tended by the surgeon, but I will draw the lips together and bandage. You can give yourself time for supper first.”
She wound the strips firmly as she spoke, though the patient spluttered in his cup, winced, and whistled. To complete the artistic effect she took the handkerchief that lay on the table and tied it neatly over all. Rockhurst was shaken with his silent laughter over the singular pair of lovers.
“Sir,” said the little hostess, rising to her feet and addressing him, then, not without dignity: “I know not whom you may be, but your presence here is the result of a misunderstanding. That you may not misunderstand further, let me inform you that I receive the Capitan Ramon at this hour only because my husband, who went off to-day to Antwerp, has forbidden him to enter his house.”
“Madam,” said Rockhurst, as he rose in his turn and bowed, concealing under an air of preternatural gravity his delight at the simple statement, “had I the honour of standing in your husband’s shoes, I should be jealous of every dog that looked at you.”
“But, sir,” she exclaimed, her gaze widening upon him, “but my husband is old and fat.”
The hard brilliancy of the Cavalier’s eye softened: here was a remark which betrayed the logic of a perfectly childish mind.
“The poor Capitan Ramon,” she went on, “has so little money and gets such poor fare. I think it but right to help him.”
“Madam,” said Rockhurst, “you have described my own case. I bless the hour when I was inspired to pass beneath the window of so tender-hearted a lady!”
“Indeed,” she said, and her creamy skin flushed to the roots of her hair, “if you will share the supper, too, I shall be glad of it.”
Again the Spaniard rolled his glare of sullen doubt. Rockhurst had not lived the life of camps for so many years without becoming familiar with every variety of your soldado. He was able, by this time, to read very clearly that here was but one of those ubiquitous “officers of fortune” who, behind a punctilious manner and a conquering exterior, screen anything but a chivalric soul—mercenaries who, no doubt, will fight when occasion is imperative, but who reckon upon looks as much as upon “derring-do” for the securing of this world’s comforts. The attack in the garden, under the spur of sudden fury, upon the invader of his own conquered province, had exhausted the Capitan’s pugnacity: Rockhurst saw that, in the further progress of the night’s adventure, this Ramon need no longer be taken into account.