Our response, I trust, was as gallant in spirit if not in effect as the bows of Malgares. I qualify because Pike had to endure the mortification of riding beneath the gaze of all those sparkling eyes in a costume better fitting a backwoods farmer than a military gentleman. He was still in his scarlet cap and blanket cloak. Yet, encouraged by our acknowledgment of the first greeting, others of the ladies caught up the cry, until we found ourselves being welcomed no less warmly and frequently than Malgares himself.
This should have been fair enough augury to reassure the most despondent of travellers. But as we jingled past house after house, I found myself, between bows, scanning the gay groups on the balconies with a sinking heart. We were nearing the plaza. I could see the trees between the blank, bare walls of the dwellings which flanked the narrow street. In a little more we should pass the last of the balconies,—and I had seen no sign of my lady.
We neared the last balcony. Upon it were only three ladies, one of whom held back behind the others, so much of her head and shoulders as showed being muffled in a silk reboza, the Mexican head-drape or shawl. The other two leaned eagerly forward over the balustrade, and the younger, a plump beauty with the blackest and most brilliant of eyes, flashed at Malgares a look that told me she was his wife, even before he called to her in terms of extravagant endearment. Unlike so many of the Spanish marriages, his had been a love match.
The señora and her yet plumper companion at the rail called down a welcome to los Americanos. Pike and I swept off our hats and bowed our handsomest. I straightened and looked up. Malgares had not checked his horse for an instant, so that we were now opposite the balcony, and I, being on the right, was almost directly beneath it. My heart gave a great leap. Smiling down upon me, over the rail, I saw the lovely face of my lady. I started to cry out her name: "Al—"
But already her finger was on her scarlet lips. I checked myself so quickly that my exclamation sounded more like an "Ah!"
My lady let fall her reboza over her face and drew back out of view. When at last I gave over craning my head about, Malgares met me with a smile. "So you have discovered her already, Don Juan!" he remarked in French.
"My señorita!" I murmured. "She is the loveliest lady in the world!"
"The most beautiful—that is true, but I cannot admit that she is the loveliest," he returned, with the loyalty of a true gentleman.
"I trust soon to repeat that last to your señora!" I exclaimed. "She was the one to whom you called."
He bowed in confirmation of my surmise. "It is the house of Señor Vallois. That other was Señora Marguerite Vallois, his wife. The house of my wife's father is on the cross-street. She came to the house of her friends to see me pass, for she knew I could not turn out of my direct way to the palacio."