She did not object to smoke either, having, as she stated, been brought up in an atmosphere of smoke at home. Therefore Jack smoked his cigar.
Had I not known that St. Nivel's inclinations were apparently fixed in the direction of bachelorhood, I should have thought he had fallen in love; but I discovered later that he had, to use an expression of his own, "simply taken on another pal." He found her a congenial person in whose society to smoke cigars. But if he had fallen in love, certainly he would have had a most excellent excuse for doing so.
A daintier little specimen of Southern beauty it would have been difficult to imagine than this little Aquazilian aristocrat. To describe her in a few words, she was a beautiful woman in miniature; she was the most perfectly symmetrical little piece of womanhood that I had ever set eyes upon.
A perfectly clear, creamy complexion, yet not without colour of a rose tint; dimples in the cheeks, which were ravishing when she smiled,—and she was very fond of smiling, ay, and laughing too, and showing the most perfect set of white teeth,—black hair, and very dark blue eyes; and there you have her. United to this beauty of person was a most fascinating natural manner; not the manner of a flirt, but that of a light-hearted, pure-minded girl, as gay as a lark released from captivity, and not unlike it in its new freedom, for she had not escaped from a first-rate finishing school in Paris more than six months.
She had spent the intervening period under the care of a sister of her father who had married an Englishman and who lived in good society.
She had had a season in London and had spent the autumn in a round of country visits which accounted for her wonderful savoir faire; she was only eighteen. Now she was going home to her dear father, a widower, under the care of her aunt. Hearing her always referred to in conversation as "Dolores," her surname was a revelation when I heard it properly pronounced. St. Nivel's idea of foreign names was exceedingly hazy and misleading. As soon as she told me she was going home to Aquazilia, I became very alert and began to ask her questions.
"Yes," she replied to my query concerning her parent's name, "my father is the Senor Don Juan d'Alta; in the old time of our monarchy he was for many years the Prime Minister. He is a very old man is my father," she further explained; "he is nearly seventy!"
Looking at her I could understand the old man simply making an idol of this his only child. It appeared to me very marvellous that I should have met her.
Some of the other passengers told me that he was a member of one of the oldest and most aristocratic families in the country.
It was very lovely as we steamed farther and farther away from our own cold fogs and got into the warmth of the south; very fascinating to walk on deck with Dolores and talk, under the brilliant stars, of Aquazilia and the extraordinary chance which had made us meet on board both with the same destination in view—the house of her father.