All this seemed so incongruous with Paul's feelings, and above all with the recollection of his scene with Yerba, that he excused himself from dining with the party, alleging an engagement with his old fellow-traveler the German officer, whose acquaintance he had renewed. Yerba did not press him; he even fancied she looked relieved. Colonel Pendleton was coming; Paul was not loath, in his present frame of mind, to dispense with his company. A conviction that the colonel's counsel was not the best guide for Yerba, and that in some vague way their interests were antagonistic, had begun to force itself upon him. He had no intention of being disloyal to her old guardian, but he felt that Pendleton had not been frank with him since his return from Rosario. Had he ever been so with HER? He sometimes doubted his disclaimer. He was lucky in finding the General disengaged, and together they dined at a restaurant and spent the evening at the Kursaal. Later, at the Residenz Club, the General leaned over his beer-glass and smilingly addressed his companion. "So I hear you, too, are a conquest of the beautiful South American." For an instant Paul, recognizing only Dona Anna under that epithet, looked puzzled. "Come, my friend," said the General regarding him with some amusement, "I am an older man than you, yet I hardly think I could have ridden out with such a goddess without becoming her slave." Paul felt his face flush in spite of himself. "Ah! you mean Miss Arguello," he said hurriedly, his color increasing at his own mention of that name as if he were imposing it upon his honest companion. "She is an old acquaintance of mine--from my own State--California." "Ah, so," said the General, lifting his eyebrows in profound apology. "A thousand pardons." "Surely," said Paul, with a desperate attempt to recover his equanimity, "YOU ought to know our geography better." "So, I am wrong. But still the name--Arguello--surely that is not American? Still, they say she has no accent, and does not look like a Mexican." For an instant Paul was superstitiously struck with the fatal infelicity of Yerba's selection of a foreign name, that now seemed only to invite that comment and criticism which she should have avoided. Nor could he explain it at length to the General without assisting and accenting the deception, which he was always hoping in some vague way to bring to an end. He was sorry he had corrected the General; he was furious that he had allowed himself to be confused.