Maxwell, knowing that he would see quite sufficient of Africa before he sailed west again, felt no great desire to go ashore; but as he gazed at the dazzling buildings through his glasses a figure came out upon the veranda, and an unaccountable impulse urged him to seek speech with Miss Castro. Why he should do so, and what he should say to her, he did not know, but he remembered that several times during his career some unconsidered action made on the spur of the moment proved as fruitful as his best laid plans. So, donning the mate's oil-skins, he dropped into a surf-boat and was whirled shoreward on a big breaker's crest, landing without misadventure amidst a cloud of spray.
Dom Pedro, it appeared, was absent, but his daughter started at the sight of the stranger, and the warm olive coloring of her face was suffused with a deeper tinge. She was herself again the next moment, and came to meet him with only a slightly heightened luster in her black eyes; but for a man Maxwell was observant, and deduced a good deal from what he had seen. Nevertheless, he was mistaken when he attributed it to the loss of his map.
Miss Castro received him affably, and presented him to her aunt, who combined a lethargic disposition with the usual portliness of an Iberian lady who has exceeded the age of forty, and after a few drowsy compliments she betrayed no further interest in the visitor. Nevertheless, the señora was not so sleepy as she appeared. Maxwell seated himself beside Bonita near the opposite end of the veranda, and was not wholly sorry he had come ashore. The girl made a charming picture as she reclined in a deep chair near at hand, smiling at him with a trace of shyness that was not assumed, though an occasional nervous movement betokened a suppressed eagerness. Maxwell had pledged himself soul and body to the service of another woman with a chivalrous self-abnegation that only those who knew him well would have suspected him capable of; but he possessed artistic perceptions, and Bonita's dark beauty appealed to him.
"You have very much to tell me. How is it you come from the westward, and where is your compañero?" she asked; and once more Maxwell was wholly misled.
He noticed the swift gleam in the dark eyes that fell beneath his own; and, knowing what he knew, he was troubled. There was a hidden gentleness under the man's sardonic exterior, but he never learned how blind he had been that afternoon.
"My comrade was well when I left him," he said gravely; and Bonita, flashing a swift glance at him, evinced less satisfaction than he had expected.
"We were the good friends, señor. You will tell me why you leave him and now come from the west. Also if you met Rideau, and what you did with him. You are a strong man, señor, but it may be a woman can help you?"
Maxwell was in his own way a chivalrous person, but he owed a duty to the comrade who remained in the forest, and he meant to discharge it. So he answered with incisive frankness.
"Can you not see why it might be better for both of us that I should not tell you, señorita?"
The girl laughed softly, then laid a little hand upon his own. It felt strangely hot, and again her eyes were luminous in a manner that puzzled him.