“And you lofe him all these a year? Oh thunner!”
Murella’s English must be taken with many grains of allowance. The strongest words in a foreign or unfamiliar tongue seem ineffectual and weak.
“I must plead the indulgence of a guest,” laughed the baroness, “and withdraw myself from the searching operations of your cunning catechism, or turn the lights upon you. How long have you known—”
But the señorita had softly glided away, standing apart and giving hurried orders for luncheon.
Morning was in a dilemma. It will have been observed that, after the first moment of greeting, Murella had given him no farther thought. Gratitude is not with the Spaniard one of the cardinal virtues, as he was aware, so that was an unvexed question. If his name had not been so prominently before the world, doubtless they would—the entire family included—have forgotten it ere this. But was it pique, was it pride, or was it embarrassment, that led Murella to thus overlook him?
Certainly she had recognized the baroness at the first glance, to his amazement and bewilderment, for the episode of her examination and temporary custody of the photograph was unknown to him, and just so surely her first impulse had been to render that lady as uncomfortable as possible. But, with her usual swift sagacity, she had, with an eye single to her own cunning tactics, quite changed her base of action, and, with admirable finesse, proceeded at once to make a friend of the baroness, through her charming frankness and unsophisticated confidences. The steady, unflinching eye of Morning, therefore, while trained as the eagle’s to catch the fiercest rays of the noonday sun, could no more follow the erratic and elusive movements of the elfish fancy of this fascinating woman than the eye of his horse could follow the flash of a meteor.
“Come, señora,” said Murella to the baroness a moment later, “I know the ting you was ask a me, how long time I know Señor Morning lofe a you.”
The baroness knew that she had not meant to ask any such question, but rather how long the señorita had known Mr. Morning. But she had scarcely opened her lips when Murella talked on.
“You tink I no know lof when a I see a? Eh! what that on his face when he a tak a your hand for make a me know you Baroness Von Eulaw? Eh? what you call proud, courage, lof, beautiful life!” and her flashing eyes burned like stars in heaven’s night.
Strange caprice! the track was cold over which she had set out to run the race for a life, and many a prize had been won and thrown away since then, and now she was burning with the wish that her rival should gain that which she had lost. Was it magnanimity, or was it a natural-born desire to defraud some man of his marital rights, and give some woman a victory?