"You vill faint, Señorita—I cannot let you go; dthere ees no seat here." He takes off my hat and fans me. "Zome boy try to frighten you," he says consolingly.
Mrs. Steele calls from the other side: "Where are you, Blanche?"
The Baron answers for me, holds me closer for an instant, and I think he touches my hair lightly with his lips.
"Forgif me, Señorita. I vill find dthat boy vhat frighten you zo; I vill gif him von hundred pesos for my sake, and I vill kill him afterwards for yours."
I put on my hat a little unsteadily, still thinking more of that awful brutish face than of the Baron. Mrs. Steele comes up with note-book open in her hand.
"I've just seen the most dreadful little old crone," she says cheerily; "she's like some grotesque dream—why, what's the matter——?"
She breaks off, looking at me as we stand under the lamplight just outside the door.
"It must be the same thing I saw," I say to the Baron; "what a goose I am—but it looked like nothing human in the half light. I was so scared," I confess, a little nervously.
"You look like a ghost, child; it was only a withered old beggar." And Mrs. Steele puts her arm about me, and we go to inspect an ancient well where the native women are filling clay jars and chatting merrily as they file in and out of the gateway of the enclosure with their picturesque burdens gracefully poised on head or shoulder.
"Let us go to dthe Plaza; Madame and Señorita can sit down for a leedle."