Fortunately for him, at the moment when, half willingly, half perforce, he was preparing, on the general request, to recommence his romance, there was a movement in the crowd; it parted to the right and left, and left a passage for a tall and pretty girl, who, with a well-turned leg confined in silk stockings with gold clocks, her rebozo coquettishly drawn over her head, and her hair buried beneath a profusion of jasmine flowers, placed herself resolutely before the singer, and said with a graceful smile, which allowed her double row of pearly teeth to be seen,—
"Are you not, caballero, a noble hidalgo of Spain, of the name of Don Cornelio?"
We must do Don Cornelio the justice to allow that he was so dazzled by this delicious apparition that he remained for some seconds with gaping mouth, unable to find a word.
The girl stamped her foot impatiently.
"Have you been suddenly turned into stone?" she asked, with a slightly mocking accent.
"Heaven forbid, señorita!" he at length stammered.
"Then be good enough to answer the question I asked you."
"Nothing easier, señorita. I am indeed Don Cornelio Mendoza de Arrizabal, and have the honour to be a Spanish gentleman."
"That is what I call plain speaking," she said, with a slight pout. "If it be so, caballero, I must ask you to follow me."
"To the end of the world," the young man exclaimed impetuously. "I should never travel in pleasanter company."