Hull rose. "My dear young lady"--he regarded her with patent consternation--"my dear young lady ... w-what is wrong?"
She was painfully aware of her bedraggled state, the whirlwind lack of ceremony with which she had propelled herself into his presence. Suddenly words failed her, she was conscious that an arm stretched toward her as she swayed. Next she lay upon a couch in an inner chamber, the commander, in his blue-and-gold-braid stiffness bending over her, gravely anxious.
She rose at once, ignoring his protesting gesture.
"I--I fainted?" she asked perplexedly. Hull nodded. "Something excited you. A fight in the street below. A man was stabbed--"
"Oh!" The white face of the bearded stranger sprang into her memory, "Is he dead?"
"No, but badly hurt, I fancy," said the Commander. "They have taken him to the City Hotel."
Desperately, she forced herself to speak. "I have come, senor, to ask a pardon for my brother. He is very dear to me--and to my mother"--she clasped her hands and held them toward him supplicatingly. "Senor, if Benito should be captured--you will have mercy?"
The commander regarded her with puzzled interest. "Who is Benito, little one?"
"His name is Windham. My father was a gring--Americano, Commandante."
Hull frowned. "An American ... fighting against his country?" he said sharply.