Nettie flashed a keen glance at him, and Violet Wayne, who saw it, felt a slight thrill of impatience, but not with the girl. It was, she fancied, evident that Nettie Harding agreed with Tony.
“It was in a hot barranco among the hills, and the Spaniards had turned the gun on the Sin Verguenza, and were sweeping them away, when he and the American lowered themselves down the rock side by creepers right into the middle of the loyalist troops. They hurled the gun over a precipice into the barranco, and when it had gone the rest of the Sin Verguenza drove the troops off with rifle fire. It was their colonel told me this. I did not see it.”
“Would you mind telling us who the Sin Verguenza were?” said Tony.
“The men without shame—that’s what it means in Spanish—an insurgent legion. They took the town in which my father and I were staying—a handful of ragged men, with two companies of drilled troops against them—and I lost my father in the crowd of fugitives. Then I hid in a church, and some drunken brigands were chasing me through the dark streets when I met the Englishman, who took care of me. The Sin Verguenza were breaking into the houses, and I was alone, horribly frightened and helpless, in that Cuban town. He was one of their officers, and he took me to the house they had made their headquarters.”
“You went with him?” asked Hester Earle.
“Yes,” said Nettie slowly, while a faint flush crept into her face, “I did. Nobody was safe from the Sin Verguenza then, and I felt I could trust him. There are men who make one feel like that, you know.”
For no apparent reason she glanced at Violet Wayne, who sat with a curious expression in her eyes, looking—not at Tony, as Miss Harding noticed—but across the valley.
“Yes,” she said, “there are. Go on, please!”
“I went with him to the rebel headquarters, and then very nearly tried to run away again, because it was like walking into the lion’s den. The patio was littered with the furniture they had thrown out of the windows, and I could hear the men roystering over their wine. Still, when I looked at the man with me, I went in.”
She stopped and sat silent a space of seconds, while none of the others spoke. They felt it might not be advisable to ask questions.