Don Lazarillo shrugged his shoulders.
"My friend was merely expressing satisfaction at your visit," said Don Christoval, loftily, yet without hauteur.
He turned to the door of the berth on the port or left-hand side of the schooner, hesitated as though conquering an instant's irresolution of mind, then turned the handle, motioning with his head that I should enter.
The berth was a small one. It was comfortably, almost handsomely, furnished after the style of the cabin in which the Spaniards lived; but I had no eyes just then for the equipment of the box of a place. The morning sun shone full upon the port-hole, and the little room was hardly less brilliant with luster than the cabin from which I had stepped. In a low, crimson velvet arm-chair was seated the lady I had been invited to visit. She sat in the posture that had been theatrically represented to me by Don Christoval. Her hands were locked upon her knees, as though she had been suddenly arrested in the act of rocking herself in a fit of wild grief; her head was bowed, and her eyes were rooted to the deck. I stood surveying her for some moments, but she never stirred; she did not appear to breathe. I did not witness the least movement of her eyes, whose lids were fixed as though, indeed, she were a figure of wax. She was dressed, or wrapped rather, in a ruby-colored dressing-gown belonging, as I might suppose by the gay style of it, to one of the Spaniards. The collar of this gown came to her throat. I was unable to see whether she was still appareled in ball attire. Handsome diamond drops hung motionless in her ears, and her hands, from which the gloves had been removed, sparkled with rings. There were three or four rings upon the third finger of her left hand, but I did not observe that one of them was a wedding ring. Her hair, that was of a dark red and very abundant, was in great disorder, but the remains of the wreath, which I had noticed on her when she lay upon the sofa, had been removed. The posture of her head left something of her face undisclosed; what I saw of it did not impress me as beautiful. Her eyebrows were lighter than her hair, almost sandy; her cheeks and brow were colorless as marble; yet her profile as I now witnessed it was not without delicacy, and I might suppose that when all was well with her she would show as a pretty woman. She looked the age Don Christoval had mentioned—twenty-two. Her stature I could not imagine, and the dressing-gown concealed her figure.
Don Lazarillo approached in a tiptoe walk and stood in the doorway staring at her.
"My dear one," said Don Christoval, faintly smiling and infusing into his accents a note of sweetness I had heard on more than one occasion in his voice, "I have brought Captain Portlack to see you. He is the captain of this schooner. He is your countryman—a true Englishman. Raise your eyes, my dear one, that you may see him," and thus speaking, with grace inexpressible, he bent his fine form over her and pressed his lips to her forehead.
Less of life could not have appeared in a statue.
"Speak to her," said Don Christoval, turning to me.
Behind us Don Lazarillo ejaculated in Spanish.
"How shall I address her?" said I, looking at the tall Spaniard.