This wasn't so bad. Jack grinned.
"Look here," he said, sensing a kindred spirit. "I'm not a rascal. You will have to believe me. I haven't done anything so terrible, after all. You need not be scared of me."
"But who are you, then?" asked the girl. "Listen. They are shouting through the house. Soon they will be making a search from room to room."
Jack started. If that were true, when the searchers came to this locked door, what would happen? He thought for a moment. The daring idea to take the girl into his confidence and enlist her aid had been budding in his mind. He regarded her keenly for the first time. Would she help? Perhaps the romantic nature of his enterprise would appeal to her, even though he was fighting against her father. Well, it would do no harm to try.
"You asked who I am," he said, "and why I am here. Well, I shall tell you."
And speaking rapidly in his fluent Spanish, in a few brief statements, he laid before her the main fact that Mr. Hampton, whom she doubtless knew, was his father, and that he had come to the rescue in an airplane.
"Only now," he concluded mournfully, "I have been discovered. I expect my chum will be forced to fly away. And it looks as if I were bound to fail."
During his recital, the girl's eyes had grown bright with interest. She leaned forward, listening with eager attention. As Jack ceased, apparently she was about to speak, but there came a tattoo of knuckles on the door which caused her to halt abruptly.
"Our deliverers," murmured Donna Ana, who had never entirely ceased trembling, and she cast a spiteful glance at Jack. To the duenna, young men, and especially one so unceremonious, were terrible creatures.
"Silence," hissed the girl, and the old duenna in evident fear of her imperious young mistress, trembled the more.