“It is not because I love you less,” she said, softly. “Promise me.”
“Very well.”
“It is now ten. We shall have supper at twelve. At one, go down the corridor behind this line of rooms to the end. Wait there for me. Ask no questions, or I won’t be there. This waltz is Captain Hastings’. I am engaged for every dance. Au revoir.”
Thorpe got through the intervening hours. He spent the greater part of them with the four doñas of the dais, and was warmly invited to visit them on their ranchos and in the old towns; and he accepted, although he knew as much of the weather of the coming month as of his future movements.
XIII
In the supper-room he sat far from Nina; but promptly at one he stole forth to the tryst. The windows looking upon the back corridor were closed. No one was moving among the mass of outbuildings. Not far away he could see the rolling surface and stark outlines of the Mission cemetery. A fine mist was flying before the stars; and a fierce wind, the first of the trades, was screaming in from the ocean.
Nina kept him waiting ten or fifteen minutes. Her white figure appeared at the end of the corridor and advanced rapidly. Thorpe met her half way, and she struck him lightly with her fan.
“Remember your promise,” she said. “And also understand that you are not to move from the place where I put you until I give you permission. Do you take that in?”
“Yes,” he said, sullenly; “but I am tired of farces and promises.”