“Why not, if I can dance well enough to please them? Captain Guido has placed me last night under obligations that permit me to do anything for his benefit and pleasure, and Señor Oliver is one of my father’s household, and as such very near to me.”
Here Oliver winces. He could betray the tyrant father, but the thought that this being of goodness and kindness will one day think him a traitor and ignoble brings with it twinges of remorse.
“Dance! The daughter of the Viceroy tossing her feet about?” ejaculates the duenna.
“Pooh!” laughs the girl archly. “Have I not posed for Señor Oliver’s Madonna—in bare feet too. Some day I am to make Señor Antony celebrated, or, rather, he will make me worshiped by his genius and his altar piece.”
“You posed for your foot” murmurs Guy, casting an enraptured glance at the exquisite member the girl displays as she still holds the Gitana attitude.
“Yes, I hope he painted them small enough to please you,” laughs the young lady. “But sit down at the spinet, Señorita Mina, and play for me so that I may enrapture the Countess de Pariza by dancing,” adds Doña Hermoine, looking archly at her duenna, who seems to have lost her appetite for Terpsichore.
To this, the dragon says sharply: “Since Juffrouw Bodé Volcker is indisposed to repeat for me the pleasure of last evening, I will go into her father’s shop and see if there are any bargains to-day in Lyons silks and velvets and the lace of Venice.”
“There should be,” remarks Oliver, suggestively. “Great bargains! The damage from the flood must have cheapened everything.”
“Bargains! Come, let me see,” and La Pariza would call her two Moorish attendants, but Guy, who has been wishing her God-speed in his heart ever since [[95]]she has entered, very politely opens the door for her departure across the courtyard to the warerooms of the merchant.
Doña Hermoine has apparently not come on a shopping expedition, at least not for laces and dress goods; she does not accompany her duenna, but remains standing, a picture of grace, in the attitude she has taken for the dance.