which is so homely a Continental usage. Then she opened a scarlet fan, and held it lightly pressed against her bosom as she took a leisurely survey of the persons at the table. She was quite Spanish in her coloring as she sat thus.

Her attention was arrested at once by a Spanish gentleman, almost directly across from her. He was a large man with an air of great dignity and distinction. His carefully trimmed beard came to a point, and this, like his full wavy mustaches, was of a jet black. The color of his skin was a clear translucent brown. But the most striking feature of his strikingly handsome face were his eyes. Large, full, and of the most liquid brilliancy, they were eyes that could never be hard, though they looked as if they could be surcharged with the glow of anger. But their usual expression was one of the most subjugating tenderness.

They were turned full upon Mrs. Van Corlear, and as she caught their eloquent gleam she seemed to have been grasped by something, and felt as if a new relation had germinated in her life. The expression of those superb eyes was bewildering, they were so ardent, so respectful, so brilliant, so melting.

That burning melancholy glance held her for a moment breathless. Despite herself, she felt her breath quicken a little. Her firm bosom rose and fell slightly with a sort of ground-swell of emotion. It was so electric, that look of the Señor's eyes! Whether her sensation was one of pleasure or pain, she could not for the life of her have told at the moment. Mrs. Van Corlear did not often let go of herself, and she rallied quickly from this slight overthrow, with the faintest dilation of her nostrils. She calmly directed her glance farther down the table.

Not, however, before the Spaniard had read the light touch of resenting hauteur which his glance had awakened, and had slowly let the lids with their long silky lashes sweep down over his brilliant eyes. When he raised them his look was elsewhere. But that slow movement of his eyes was like the courtly bow with which a gentleman might deprecate unwitting intrusion on the

pathway of a lady. It was full of chivalric homage.

"Interesting old room," said Mrs. Van Corlear, turning languidly to Mrs. Oliver, who was seated at her left

hand.

"Interesting? It is simply ravishing!" said that lady. "It's so Spanish." Mrs. Oliver's expressions were always a little in advance of her appreciations.

It was interesting, and also Spanish, whether ravishing or no. The cool dining-room opened on one side upon an arcade through whose gray arches gleamed in riotous color the affluence of bright plants and green leaves in the inner court. The air came softly in through the windows, and the sunlight was of a golden brown.

A girl with a large shallow basket filled with bouquets and flowers passed along by the guests at the table, seeking to vend her wares. The Señor raised his finger to arrest her, and murmured something in her ear. The girl nodded and continued her round. When she reached the place where Mrs. Van Corlear and Mrs. Oliver were seated, she picked a large bunch of roses from her basket and laid them at Mrs. Oliver's plate.

Instinctively Mrs. Van Corlear flashed a glance across to where the Señor was. She caught the vanishing end of a smile of comical disgust on his full lips.

Mrs. Oliver turned to her friend. "What would you do? That man must have sent me these roses. Aren't they beautiful?" and Eve-like, Mrs. Oliver dwelt on their rich color.

"Oh, I don't know," said Mrs. Van Corlear. "It's so Spanish!" she murmured.

She could hardly keep her lips in order. The coy reluctance of Mrs. Oliver to accept flowers which had only come to her by a mistake stirred Mrs. Van Corlear's sense of humor.

Mrs. Oliver raised the flowers absentmindedly and inhaled their fragrance moderately. When she rose to leave the table she left the flowers but turned a decorously languid glance on the Señor. To her discomfiture he was quite absorbed in a pomegranate.

The next morning after breakfast Mrs. Van Corlear surveyed Roger a moment

before he went out to air his golden curls in the Park with Miss Rutger, and then went up to her room. As she opened the door a sensuous sweetness came drifting out of the room. On her dressing-table was a wicker basket filled

with great red roses, the dew glistening on the petals with wholesome freshness. She stood for a moment looking at them. The vision of a pair of eyes, limpid and deep, full of tender caressingness, rose before her. She slowly stooped and

buried her face in the mass of flowers. It was like taking a bath in perfume, as she held her cheeks pressed close to the cool petals. When she raised her head with a drop or two of dew on her face like a dashed-away tear, she saw a card among the roses. She pulled it out. There was a line on it in Spanish. Miss Rutger was the only one of the party who knew Spanish.

66

What does this say, Rutger? she asked, handing her the card when she came in. Miss Rutger took it and translated it into English. "With the profound respect of a friend."

Oh," said Mrs. Van Corlear.

As soon as they entered the diningroom that evening, she noticed the Señor in his place of the night before. The servant was about to usher them to places higher up the table.

"I think we will keep our old seats," said Mrs. Van Corlear. "We will sit in this place while we are here. I cannot bear to be changing constantly," she said to Mrs. Oliver as they sank into their chairs. She made a slight bow to the guests and her glance swept the Señor's face. His gleaming eyes were bent on her with their soft intensity.

The next morning Mrs. Van Corlear inspected Roger before his walk, and kissed him good-by with even more clinging affection than usual. Then she walked up the stairs about a quarter of a minute more rapidly than yesterday, and when she opened her door her glance sought the table at once. There they were, fresh, dewy, and blushing. There was no card with them this time.

That evening as she was about leaving her room to go down to dinner Mrs. Van Corlear paused a moment, then went back to her dressing-table and selecting a large red rose pinned it in her dress. There was the least additional dignity in her carriage as she entered the room, and she did not look at the Señor at all, though she felt that he was there with a brighter glow in his soft eyes. Mrs. Van Corlear was beginning to feel that drinking from the living wells of the Señor's eyes was taking a stimulant, whose strength she did not fully know.

For five weeks they remained in Barcelona. "I like it. The air is good for

VOL. IV.-80

Roger. There is nowhere we are anxious to go. Why hurry away?" Mrs. Van Corlear said. Mr. Van Corlear hadn't the faintest wish to hurry away from anywhere unless it was to get back to New York and the comforts of home. So they stayed.

Every morning on opening her door, Mrs. Van Corlear saw the beautiful red roses on her table. As a rule, the flowers were solely the large red roses so common in Barcelona, sometimes loosely massed in a basket, sometimes bound into a large bouquet. She began to feel a certain restless desire after breakfast to get back to her room and see if they were there. They never failed.

Occasionally, in the beginning, but afterward every evening, Mrs. Van Corlear selected the richest rose of them all and wore it in her bosom to dinner. The Señor's eyes were waiting for it. It was strange how perfectly he could express such different sentiments with his eyes, while the rest of his face was as quiet as the shadow of a wall. They could look so serious, then brighten into a questioning glance, veiled but vivid, and then melt so marvellously into that look of retiring homage, a soft burning glance suffused with tenderness.

Sometimes there seemed to be a grave, scarcely perceptible inclination of the handsome head as Mrs. Van Corlear would seat herself and suffer her eyes to fall for a moment on the Señor. Probably it was only the slow veiling of his eyes, but it seemed like a silent salutation. To look at him and not look at his eyes was impossible. They constrained and held one. But between the Señor and Mrs. Van Corlear this was all. If there were any advance it was so graduated that it could only be felt, not descried. At the end of the five weeks they were outwardly precisely where they were when Mrs. Van Corlear entered the dining-room of the Cuatro Naciones five weeks before.

"You are running the flower-business: pretty well, aren't you?" said Mr. Van Corlear one forenoon when he saw a large vase of the red roses on his wife's table. He did not deprecate it. She could have had them by the tub-full if she chose. Mr. Van Corlear never refused her anything-that she asked for.

"Roses are like the air in Barcelona. They almost grow into one's hands," answered Mrs. Van Corlear.

at

It was nearly time for the Carnival of Flowers Nice, and Mr. Van Corlear thought he would like to go. It was so long since he

had seen any Americans. So he ordered their luggage to be taken to the packet for Marseilles the next day, and settled the bill with a cheerful indifference to its three large figures.

Not a word had passed between the Señor and Mrs. Van Corlear. His eyes had discoursed to her as subtilely and as exhaus

When they had got on the steamer, Mrs. Van Corlear came out, sat down

tively as an old schoolman of Coimbra, and the roses at her breast, his roses, may have had speech for the Señor. But spoken word there had been not one. The Spanish gentleman frequently met Roger in the Park and treated him to bonbons and donkeyrides till that young gentleman thought his benevolence and worth supreme. He chattered away to his mamma about the dark gentleman with the ungrudging enthusiasm of his four years. Mrs. Van Corlear listened with her arms around his neck and her face pressed to his.

"Mamma," he said to her on one of these occasions, "the dark gentleman thought Miss Rutger was my mamma. He knew who my papa was, though."

"Isn't he a funny gentleman?" she said to him in the playful tone she used

on a deck-chair, and looked at the old town. The line of her eyebrows was more plaintive in its curve than ever. Was she thinking of the Señor's matutinal roses which she was forsaking?

He

She must certainly have recalled them a moment later when a closed carriage drove up to the quay and an imposing Spaniard got out with a dignity which made the action quite a ceremony. walked up the gangway followed by his man, who carried a travelling-bag and something which showed red through white tissue paper. They disappeared in the cabin.

The trip was a rough one. The boat began to pitch half an hour after they started, and kept it up with a vigor which drove most of the passengers into an obscurity suited to the particular