“Rot!” said Dick. “Comparisons are odious. I say, thank Heaven for a pretty girl, whatever she may be. But there's something particularly fascinating about this one.”
“I see a serious objection to her from your point of view,” I [pg 69]went on. “She's too young. You draw the line at them under twenty-two. I'll bet you she won't see twenty-two for a couple of years yet.”
“She might be worth waiting for,” said Dick.
“No good. She'll be married long before twenty-two. All self-respecting Spanish girls are. You'd better not think of her any more. Forget her, and look up Miss O'Donnel.”
“Angèle de la Mole says Miss O'Donnel's pretty,” said Dick. As he spoke, he beckoned a waiter; and I noticed that the girl with the eyes no longer made any pretence of hiding her interest in Dick. She even whispered to her companion, who, after listening to what she had to say, turned to look at us with benign curiosity.
“Ask whether he knows Colonel O'Donnel and Miss O'Donnel by sight,” Dick commanded when the waiter appeared, to breathe benevolence and garlic upon us in equal quantities. He was shy of airing his own Spanish before a roomful of Spanish people.
I asked; the waiter looked surprised, and to Dick's confusion and my astonishment, indicated the occupants of the next table.
“The colonel and the señorita,” said he. It was so startlingly like an introduction that the cherubic brown man sprang up and bowed; and the girl, bending over the mazapan in her plate, let us see the very top coil on her crown of black hair.
Dick, overwhelmed, and recalling every word we had said, as a drowning man recalls each wicked deed of his life from childhood up, got to his feet, and began stammering explanations.
“Well, that shows what an idiot a man can make of himself,” said he. “Miss—Mademoiselle de la Mole gave me a letter of introduction, and a parcel with some little present, and I was looking around for you. My name's Richard Waring; I don't know whether mademoiselle's written about me. Anyhow—”