"I'm afraid it is another case of mistaken identity, Aunt Clarissa," interposed Myra. "Señor de Ruiz has made the amazing and amusing suggestion that I am the woman! Did you ever hear anything more absurd?"
She thought to cover Don Carlos with confusion, but he did not turn a hair.
"Alas, Lady Fermanagh, your charming niece refuses to take me seriously!" he smilingly lamented. "It seems she was warned as a child to beware of a tall, dark, handsome man, and to put no faith in his honeyed words. I am desolated—but only temporarily!"
"From what I can make of it, you appear to have been engaged in a 'leg-pulling' contest," commented Lady Fermanagh, darting a quick glance from one to the other, and deciding that Myra was probably evolving some mischievous joke. "You don't mean to tell me seriously, Don Carlos, that you have any faith in the predictions of a gipsy?"
"Dear lady, since the King of the Gypsies predicted I should get my heart's desire, surely it would be almost heresy to doubt?" Don Carlos replied, with a side-glance at Myra. "In my own country I have the reputation always of gaining anything on which I set my heart, and here I intend to live up to my reputation. Assuredly the Gypsy King's prediction will come true, your ladyship."
He took his leave a few minutes later, pleasing Lady Fermanagh greatly by bowing low over her hand and raising her fingers to his lips.
"One of the most charming men I have met for years," the old lady remarked, when the door closed behind him. "He is a true Spanish grandee, with all the grace of a born courtier. I think it was exceedingly rude of you, Myra, to snatch your hand away as you did when Don Carlos was going to kiss your fingertips."
"Personally, Aunt, I think he is the most arrogant, ill-mannered and insufferably conceited man I have ever met," Myra responded warmly. "He openly boasts that no woman can resist him, prides himself on his conquests, and while you were out of the room he was making passionate love to me, and only made fun of my attempts to snub him. I hope you won't invite the horrible creature here again."
Lady Fermanagh regarded her in amazement for a few moments, then dissolved into laughter.
"Oh, you modern girls!" she exclaimed. "You think you know such a lot and are so advanced, yet you are as easily scared or fooled as any country maiden in Victorian times."