With her never-failing shrewd common sense, the girl thought it best to play the play out. After all, a good deal depended on it, to her thinking. She looked into his eyes. She saw there an almost childlike sincerity of purpose. If truth did not lie in the well of those eyes, then truth is not to be found in mortal orbs at all. But the quick and clever Dolores did fancy that she saw flashing now and then beneath the surface of those eyes some gleams of fitfulness, restlessness—some light that the world calls eccentric, some light which your sound and practical man would think of as only meant to lead astray—to lead astray, that is, from substantial dividends and real property, and lucky strokes on the Stock Exchange, and peerages and baronetcies and other good things. There was a strong dash of the poetic about Dolores, for all her shrewd nature and her practical bringing-up, and her conflicts over hotel bills; and somehow, she could not tell why, she found that as she looked into the eyes of Captain Sarrasin her own suddenly began to get dimmed with tears.
'Well, dear girl,' he asked, 'have you figured me up, and can you trust me?'
'I have figured you up,' she said warmly, 'and I can trust you;' and with an impulse she put her hand into his.
'Trust me anywhere—everywhere?'
'Anywhere—everywhere!' she murmured passionately.
'All right,' he said, cheerfully. 'I have the fullest faith in you, and now that you have full faith in me we can come straight at things. I want you to know my wife. She would be very fond of you, I am quite sure. But, now, for the moment: You were wondering why I am staying in this hotel?'
'I was,' she said, with some hesitancy, 'because I didn't know you——'
'And because you were interested in the Dictator of Gloria?'
She felt herself blushing slightly; but his face was perfectly serious and serene. He was evidently regarding her only in the light of a political partisan. She felt ashamed of her reddening cheeks.
'Yes; I am greatly interested in him,' she answered quite proudly; 'so is my father.'