"Half past five! Good! I have time: he will not arrive before."
While speaking thus to himself, the stranger threw himself back in the butaca; his eyes closed, his hand loosed its hold of the cigarette, and a few minutes later he was sleeping soundly.
His sleep had lasted about half an hour, when a door behind him was cautiously opened, and a pretty woman, twenty-three at the most, with blue eyes and light hair, came into the room stealthily, curiously stretching out her head, and fixing a kind, almost affectionate, glance on the sleeper.
The young woman's face evidenced gaiety and maliciousness, blended with extreme kindness. Her features, though not regular, formed a coquettish and graceful whole which pleased at the first glance. Her excessively white complexion distinguished her from the other rancheros' wives, who are generally copper-coloured Indians: her dress was that belonging to her class, but remarkably neat, and worn with a coquettishness that admirably became her.
She thus came up softly to the sleeper, with her head thrown back, and a finger laid on her lip, doubtless to recommend two persons who followed her—a middle-aged man and woman—to make as little noise as possible.
The woman appeared to be about fifty years of age, the man sixty; their rather ordinary features had nothing striking about them, excepting a certain expression of energetic decision spread over them.
The woman wore the garb of Mexican rancheros; as for the man, he was a vaquero.
All three, on coming close to the stranger, stopped before him, and watched him sleeping.
At this moment a sunbeam entered through the open window, and fell on the stranger's face.
"Vive Dieu!" the latter exclaimed in French, as he sprang up suddenly and opened his eyes; "Why, deuce take me, I really believe I was asleep!"