“And you’re a dancer?” she asked.
“Yes, I was dancing at the Estrella.”
Rodrigo explained that this was a cabaret, the kind of place with which the Señorita would not be familiar.
“And you’re Italian?”
The girl nodded, and Sylvia, seeing that it would be impossible to extract anything about her story in her present overwrought state, decided to take her back to the pension.
“And I will carry the Señorita’s guitar,” said Rodrigo. “To-morrow morning at eleven o’clock?” he asked by the gate of Sylvia’s pension. “Or would the Señorita prefer that I waited to conduct the señorita extraviada?”
Sylvia bade him come in the morning; with a deep bow to her and to the stranger he departed, twanging his guitar. Mrs. Gainsborough, who by this time had reached the point of thinking that her American widower existed only to be oracular, wished to ask his advice about the stranger, and was quite offended with Sylvia for telling her rather sharply that she did not want all the inmates of the pension buzzing round the frightened child.
“Chocolate would be more useful than advice,” Sylvia said.
“I know you’re very down on poor Mr. Linthicum, but he’s a mass of information. Only this morning he was explaining how you can keep eggs fresh for a year by putting them in a glass of water. Now I like a bit of advice. I’m not like you, you great harum-scarum thing.”
Mrs. Gainsborough was unable to remain very long in a state of injured dignity; she soon came up to Sylvia’s bedroom with cups of chocolate.