Even the gradual change from the glaring sunshine of the courtyard to the heavy shadows of the two rooms he had passed through was not sufficient to accustom his eyes to the twilight of the apartment he now entered. For several seconds he could not distinguish anything but a few dimly outlined objects. By degrees he saw that there were a bed, a prie-dieu, and a sofa against the opposite wall. The scant light of two windows—mere longitudinal slits in the deep walls—at first permitted him only this. Later he saw that the sofa was occupied by a half-reclining figure, whose face was partly hidden by a fan, and the white folds of whose skirt fell in graceful curves to the floor.
"You speak Spanish, Don Arturo?" said an exquisitely modulated voice from behind the fan, in perfect Castilian.
Arthur turned quickly toward the voice with an indescribable thrill of pleasure in his nerves.
"A little."
He was usually rather proud of his Spanish, but for once the conventional polite disclaimer was quite sincere.
"Be seated, Don Arturo."
He advanced to a chair indicated by the old woman within a few feet of the sofa and sat down. At the same instant the reclining figure, by a quick, dexterous movement, folded the large black fan that had partly hidden her features, and turned her face toward him.
Arthur's heart leaped with a sudden throb, and then, as it seemed to him, for a few seconds stopped beating. The eyes that met his were large, lustrous, and singularly beautiful; the features were small, European, and perfectly modelled; the outline of the small face was a perfect oval, but the complexion was of burnished copper! Yet even the next moment he found himself halting among a dozen comparisons—a golden sherry, a faintly dyed meerschaum, an autumn leaf, the inner bark of the madroño. Of only one thing was he certain—she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen!
It is possible that the Donna read this in his eyes, for she opened her fan again quietly, and raised it slowly before her face. Arthur's eager glance swept down the long curves of her graceful figure to the little foot in the white satin slipper below. Yet her quaint dress, except for its colour, might have been taken for a religious habit, and had a hood or cape descending over her shoulders not unlike a nun's.
"You have surprise, Don Arturo," she said, after a pause, "that I have sent for you, after having before consulted you by proxy. Good! But I have changed my mind since then! I have concluded to take no steps for the present toward perfecting the grant."