She shook her head, plainly puzzled. "But you are young," she said, and
stole another glance at him, adding a little shyly, "at least not very
old, and I feel, I am sure that you too have a broken paw, but when that
is well you will go back to your own country, to cities again. You
couldn't stand it here always."
He looked at her, an enigmatic smile on his lips. "Couldn't I?" he
said. Glancing again at her as he rose, he saw that she seemed weary,
her lashes lay long on her pale cheek. "Oh," with a touch of compunction
in his tone, "I have, as usual, talked far too much. You are tired and
we must go. Jose," lifting his voice, "as soon as you finish that game."
"The Devil is indeed at your elbow," cried Jose, flinging down his
cards, "and prompts all you say. We have just this moment finished a
game and Gallito is the winner."
Gallito smiled with bleak geniality. "Has Jose been wise?" he asked,
rising and replenishing the dying fire.
"Fairly so," Seagreave smiled, "as far as he knows how to be. He has
been up to some of his antics, though. They are beginning to say that
this hillside is haunted."
While Gallito talked to Seagreave and Mrs. Nitschkan and Jose argued
over certain rules of the game they had been playing, Mrs. Thomas sidled
up to Pearl and stood looking at her with the absorbed unconsciousness
of an admiring child.
"I s'pose," she began, swaying back and forth bashfully and touching the
pink bow at her throat, "that it does look kind of queer to any one
that's so up on the styles as you are to see me wearing a pink bow at my
neck and a crepe veil down my back?"
Pearl looked up in wearied surprise.
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