"Am I so wondrous pretty, then?"
"Fairer than any woman living!" he declared. I knew well enough it was a tender falsehood, but since he seemed to believe it himself it was every whit as satisfactory as if it had been truth!
"Be comforted," I whispered, reassuringly. "I know very well how to make myself quite homely. I have only to pull all my curls back from my brow and club them behind: straightway I will become so old and ugly that no man would care to look me twice in the face. Wait till to-morrow, and you will see!"
A laugh broke from Mr. Rivers's lips, and then he sighed heavily.
"Nay, sweetheart, if it be the head-dress you assumed one day some months ago for my peculiar punishment, I pray you will not try its efficacy on the Spaniard; for it serves but to make you the more irresistible."
But already I have dwelt longer upon myself and my own feelings than is needful for the telling of my tale. I must hasten on to those happenings that more nearly concerned Mr. Rivers. Yet, in looking backward, I find it hard to tear my thoughts from the memory of that last hour of quiet converse with my dear love, under the starlit southern skies. How seldom we realize our moments of great happiness until after they have slipped away! It seemed to me then that we were in the shadow of a dark-winged host of fears; but now I know that it served only to make our mutual faith burn the more brightly.
I did not, thereafter, neglect Mr. Rivers's warning, and avoided the Spaniard as much as possible. My dear love lingered always at my elbow, and replied for me, in easy Spanish, to all the courteous speeches of Don Pedro.
Sometimes I think it would have been far better had he left me to follow my own course. There are some men who need only a hint of rivalry to spur them on where of their own choice they had never thought to adventure. Melinza's attentions did not diminish, while his manner toward Mr. Rivers lost in cordiality as time went on.