Carmencita heard her out, but not as a judge. Very early in the story her doubts fled and she succumbed to the mothering instinct in her. She took the American girl in her arms and laughed and cried with her; for her imagination seized on the romance of the story and delighted in its fresh unconventionality. Since she had been born Carmencita’s life had been ordered for her with precision by the laws of caste. Her environment wrapped her in so that she must follow a set and beaten path. It was, to be sure, a flower-strewn one, but often she impotently rebelled against its very orderliness. And here in her arms was a victim of that adventurous romance she had always longed so passionately to know. Was it wonder she found it in her heart to both love and envy the subject of it? “And this young cavalier—the Señor Bucky, is it you call him?—surely you love him, my dear.” “Oh, señorita!” The blushing face was buried on her new friend’s shoulder. “You don’t know how good he is.” “Then tell me,” smiled the other. “And call me Carmencita.” “He is so brave, and patient, and good. I know there was never a man like him.” Miss Carmencita thought of one and demurred silently. “I’m sure this paragon of lovers is at least part of what you say. Does he love you? But I am sure he couldn’t help it.” “Sometimes I think he does, but once—” Frances broke off to ask, in a pink flame: “How does a lover act?” Miss Carmencita’s laughter rippled up. “Gracious me, have you never had one before.” “Never.” “Well, he should make verses to you and pretty speeches. He should sing serenades about undying love under your window. Bonbons should bombard you, roses make your rooms a bower. He should be ardent as _Romeo_, devoted as a knight of old. These be the signs of a true love,” she laughed. Frances’ face fell. If these were the tokens of true love, her ranger was none. For not one of the symptoms could fairly be said to fit him. Perhaps, after all, she had given him what he did not want. “Must he do all that? Must he make verses?” she asked blankly, not being able to associate Bucky with poetasting. “He must,” teased her tormentor, running a saucy eye over her boyish garb. “And why not with so fair a _Rosalind_ for a subject?” She broke off to quote in her pretty, uncertain English, acquired at a convent in the United States, where she had attended school: “From the east to western Ind, No jewel is like Rosalind. Her worth being mounted on the wind, Through all the world bears Rosalind. All the pictures, fairest lin’d, Are but black to Rosalind. Let no face be kept in mind But the fair of Rosalind.”