"I make my excuses, but the permit will be ready to-morrow," he said. "In the meanwhile my daughter, who is in the patio, would thank you for several courtesies at Las Palmas."
Ormsgill turned away, and went down to the little pink-washed patio which was filled with straggling flowers and was, at least, comparatively cool. The girl who lay in a big chair did not rise, but signed to him to take another near her side, and then looked up at him with big violet eyes. It did not occur to Ormsgill that there was any significance in the fact that the only two chairs in the patio should be close together, but it struck him that Benicia Figuera was a very well-favored young woman, and very much in harmony with her surroundings. Colorless as her face was, there was a scintillation in her eyes, and a depth of hue in her somewhat full red lips, which with the sweeping lines of her lightly-draped, rounded form suggested that there was in her a full measure of the warm and vivid life of the tropics. Her voice was low and quiet, and her English passable.
"I believe my father has been giving you good advice," she said.
"Why should you think that?" asked Ormsgill, lightly.
His companion's gesture might have meant anything. "You feel the advice is excellent, but you do not mean to take it? It is not a thing you often do. In one way I am sorry."
Ormsgill laughed. "Might one ask why you should take so much interest in an obstinate stranger?"
The girl moved her hands, which were white and very shapely, in a fashion which seemed to imply a protest. Ormsgill noticed that they had also the appearance of capable hands, and he fancied that their grasp could be tenacious.
"Ah," she said, "there were little courtesies shown us at Las Palmas, things that made our stay there pleasanter, and I think there was, perhaps, no great reason why you should have done them for my father." Then her eyes twinkled. "I am not sure that all your friends were very pleased with you."
Ormsgill did not smile this time. He recollected now that Ada Ratcliffe had been distinctly less gracious and her mother more formal than usual after one or two of the trifling courtesies he had shown Dom Clemente and the girl, but it had not occurred to him to put the two things together.
"I wonder," he said reflectively "how you come to speak such excellent English."