'Dear young lady, you challenge me like a sentry.' And Captain Sarrasin smiled benignly, feeling, however, a good deal puzzled.
'I have been told that you are against him,' the girl said; 'and now that I see you I must say that I don't believe it.'
'Who told you that I was against him?' the stout old Paladin asked; 'and why shouldn't I be against him if my conscience directed me that way?'
'Well, it was supposed that you might be against him. You are both staying in this hotel, and, until the other day, you have never called upon him or gone to see him, or even sent your card to him. That seemed to my father a little strange. He talked of asking you frankly all about it. I said I would ask you. And I am glad to have got you here, Captain Sarrasin, to challenge you like a sentry.'
'Well, but now look here, my dear young lady—why should your father care whether I was for the Dictator or against him?'
'Because if you were against him it might not be well that you were in the same house,' Dolores answered with business-like promptitude and straightforwardness, 'getting to know what people called on him, and how long they stayed, and all that.'
'Playing the spy, in fact?'
'Such things have been done, Captain Sarrasin.'
'By gentlemen and soldiers, Miss Paulo?' and he looked sternly at her. The unabashed damsel did not quail in the least.
'By persons calling themselves gentlemen and soldiers,' she answered fearlessly. The old warrior smiled. He liked her courage and her frankness. It was clear that she and her father were devoted friends of the Dictator. It was clear that somebody had suspected him of being one of the Dictator's political enemies. He took to Dolores.