It was not even late when the Professor with eager feet came up the path, all inlaid with the ferny tracery of shadows from the pepper-boughs. The veranda, apparently deserted, greeted him silently, and he stood a moment battling with an immense disappointment. It seemed to him that he had lost forever an evening out of his life.
Slowly he mounted the steps, and on the threshold he paused again. A long tendril of the Banksia swayed in the half-shadow, and surely his ears caught a suppressed sobbing breath. He made one step toward it.
"Francisca!"
"It is I, Señor," replied the melancholy voice of Francisco; and the boy came forward into the moonlight. "Did you wish anything, Señor?"
"Nothing," replied the Professor, mendaciously, his cheeks warm in the darkness.
"Good-night, Francisco!"
Francisca "kept the house."—[Page 277].
"Good-night, Señor!" returned the boy in the same melancholy tone.