There was no smile in her eyes this time, and her companion thought rapidly. Then, after another gesture which expressed resignation, he spoke for some three or four minutes until the girl checked him with a sign.
"If Dom Clemente has any questions to ask he will send for you," she said. "If not, you must not trouble him about the matter. I think you understand?"
It was evident that the man did so, for he went out with a respectful gesture of comprehension, and then turned and shook a yellow fist at the door which closed behind him. He could foresee that to do as he was bidden might involve him in difficulties, but Benicia Figuera was something of a power in that country, and he knew it was seldom advisable to thwart her. She, as it happened, sat still thinking for a time, and as the result of it when Desmond's gig went ashore next morning a negro handed one of her crew a little note. That afternoon Desmond dressed himself with somewhat unusual care before he was rowed ashore, and on being ushered into a white house by a uniformed negro was not altogether astonished to find Benicia Figuera waiting for him alone in a big cool room. He had met her in Las Palmas, and she smiled at him graciously as she pointed to a little table where wine and cigarettes were laid out.
"They are at your disposal. Here one smokes at all times and everywhere," she said.
Desmond sat down some distance away from her, for as he said afterwards, she was astonishingly pretty as well as most artistically got up, and he was on his guard.
"I almost fancy it is advisable that I should keep my head just now, and it already promises to be sufficiently difficult," he said with a twinkle in his eyes. "Dom Clemente is presumably not at home. That is why you sent for me?"
Now the compliments men offer a lady in the Iberian Peninsula are as a rule artistically involved, but the girl laughed.
"He will not be back until this evening, but the excellent Señora Castro in whose charge I am is now sitting on the veranda," she said. "You need not put your armor on, my friend. It would be useless anyway."
"Yes," said the man reflectively, "I almost think it would be."
"And my intentions are friendly."