'Yesterday, yes; but not before.'
'Yes, but don't you see, dear,' Dolores said eagerly, 'that would cut both ways. You think that he is not a friend, but an enemy?'
'I begin to fear so, Dolores.'
'But, don't you see, an enemy might be for that very reason all the more anxious to pass himself off as a friend?'
'Yes, there's something in that, little girl; there's something in that, to be sure. But now you just hear me out before you let your mind come to any conclusion one way or the other.'
'I'll hear you out,' said Dolores; 'you need not be afraid about that.'
Dolores knew her father to be a cool-headed and sensible man; but still, even that fact would hardly in itself account for the interest she took in suspicions which appeared to have only the slightest possible foundation. She was evidently listening with breathless anxiety.
'Now, of course, I never allow revolutionary plotting in this house,' Paulo went on to say. 'I may have my sympathies and you may have your sympathies, and so on; but business is business, and we can't have any plans of campaign carried on in Paulo's Hotel. Kings are as good customers to me when they're on a throne as when they're off it—better maybe.'
'Yes, dear, I know all about that.'
'Still, one must assume that a man like his Excellency will see his friends in private, in his own rooms, and talk over things. I don't suppose he and Mr. Hamilton are talking about nothing but the play and the opera and Hurlingham, and all that.'