Nevertheless he was not displeased. Conferring with Francesca concerning a change of clothes after Seyd was safely bestowed in a bedroom, he expressed his secret admiration. “See you, an enormous ceiba rolls over and sends him and the canoa to the bottom, yet he speaks of it with shamed laughter as though of a fault. Also he would have borrowed a mozo and horse to travel back to the inn. What a man he would have made for the old wars!”
A charro suit, so close to Seyd’s size as to be almost a fit, was the best that Francesca, after a voluble consultation with her maids, could offer in the way of change, and, though he experienced modest qualms at the sight of himself in tight trousers and short bolero jacket of soft leather gorgeously embroidered with silver, they undoubtedly brought out qualities of limb which were altogether lost in his usual clothing. If he could have seen the touch of admiration that softened the mischief in Francesca’s dark eyes when he entered the living-room, his misgivings might have vanished. But the phenomenon occurred behind his back, and his recent vow against “sentimental fooling” did not prevent him from coloring at her whispered remark:
“You remind me of one Señor Rosario.”
Later, he was to spend considerable time trying to appease conscience with plausible explanations of his feeling, to set it down to relief that their adventure had brought her no trouble. But while relief may have entered in, it was principally due to the fact that she had chosen to retie the thread of their acquaintance just where it had been severed by Sebastien’s intrusion. Yet, whatsoever its constituents, his pleasant embarrassment did not paralyze his tongue.
“I cannot return the compliment.”
Neither could he. With Rosa, the pretty peona, this young lady in foamy white had nothing in common, and Rosa would have certainly felt out of place amidst the luxurious appointments of the room. Ample in all its dimensions, the furnishings had evidently been selected from the garnered treasures of several generations, with such taste, however, that the unmatched pieces made a harmonious whole. The old hangings which excluded the damp night, the old rugs on the mahogany floor, and old furniture lent each other countenance, melted into a rich design. Even the grand piano, undoubtedly the latest addition, was taking the tone of age. Only the bookcases which flanked the great fireplace displayed a modern note, for in them fine editions of English classics crowded the novels and plays of Cervantes and Lope Felix de Vega, Daudet, Flaubert, Anatole France, De Maupassant, competed for room with Spanish and English translations of the modern Russians.
“Her taste,” Seyd had summed the room. “Your books?” he asked, with a nod at these astonishing shelves.
“Yes, no one else reads them.” She added, with smiling directness: “Or could understand. If the dear mother read French, oh, what a bonfire we should have!”
“And you like them—the Frenchmen?”
“Some—in some things.” Her brows arching in the effort for clear expression, she went on: “They know life, and one cannot but enjoy their beautiful style. But”—the delicate penciling drew even finer—“they see only with the eye. They are brilliant—as diamonds, and just as hard, cold. They analyze, dissect, probe life, take it apart, then forget to put it together. Love they see only as passion devoid of sympathy, affection, friendship. Their art is of the senses, their refinement—of manner. Under the veneer they are gross and hard.”