'Oh, that she is young and very pretty, quite a beauty they tell me; but you know, my dear, that with Royal Princesses and very rich girls a little beauty goes a long way.'
'It wouldn't with him,' Dolores answered emphatically.
'With whom?' Captain Sarrasin asked blankly, and Dolores saw that she had all unwittingly put herself in an awkward position. 'I meant,' she tried to explain, 'that I don't think his Excellency would be governed much by a young woman's money.'
'But, my dear girl, where are we now? Did I ever say he would be?'
'Oh, no,' she replied meekly, and anxious to get back to the point of the conversation. 'Then you think, Captain Sarrasin, that his Excellency has enemies here in London—enemies from Gloria, I mean.'
'I shouldn't wonder in the least if he had,' Sarrasin replied cautiously. 'I know there are some queer chaps from Gloria about in London now. So we come to the point, dear girl, and now I answer the question we started with. That's why I am staying in this hotel.'
Dolores drew a deep breath.
'I knew it from the first,' Dolores said. 'I was sure you had come to watch over him.'
'That's exactly why I am here. Some of them, perhaps, will only know me by name as a soldier of fortune, and may think that they could manage to humbug me and get me over to their side. So they'll probably come to me and try to talk me over, don't you see? They'll try to make me believe that Ericson was a tyrant and a despot, don't you know; and that I ought to go back to Gloria and help the Republic to resist the oppressor, and so get me out of the way and leave the coast clear to them—see? Others of them will know pretty well that where I am on watch and ward, I am the right man in the right place, and that it isn't of much use their trying on any of their little assassination dodges here—don't you see?'
Dolores was profoundly touched by the simple vanity and the sterling heroism of this Christian soldier—for she could not account him any less. She believed in him with the fullest faith.