Arthur's heart leaped with a sudden throb, and then, as it seemed to him, for a few seconds stopped beating. The eyes that met his were large, lustrous, and singularly beautiful; the features were small, European, and perfectly modelled; the outline of the small face was a perfect oval, but the complexion was of burnished copper! Yet even the next moment he found himself halting among a dozen comparisons--a golden sherry, a faintly dyed meerschaum, an autumn leaf, the inner bark of the _madroño_. Of only one thing was he certain--she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen! It is possible that the Donna read this in his eyes, for she opened her fan again quietly, and raised it slowly before her face. Arthur's eager glance swept down the long curves of her graceful figure to the little foot in the white satin slipper below. Yet her quaint dress, except for its colour, might have been taken for a religious habit, and had a hood or cape descending over her shoulders not unlike a nun's. "You have surprise, Don Arturo," she said, after a pause, "that I have sent for you, after having before consulted you by proxy. Good! But I have changed my mind since then! I have concluded to take no steps for the present toward perfecting the grant." In an instant Arthur was himself again--and completely on his guard. The Donna's few words had recalled the past that he had been rapidly forgetting; even the perfectly delicious cadence of the tones in which it was uttered had now no power to fascinate him or lull his nervous anxiety. He felt a presentiment that the worst was coming. He turned toward her, outwardly calm, but alert, eager, and watchful. "Have you any newly discovered evidence that makes the issue doubtful?" he asked. "No," said Donna Dolores. "Is there anything?--any fact that Mrs. Sepulvida has forgotten?" continued Arthur. "Here are, I believe, the points she gave me," he added, and, with the habit of a well-trained intelligence, he put before Donna Dolores, in a few well-chosen words, the substance of Mrs. Sepulvida's story. Nor did his manner in the least betray a fact of which he was perpetually cognisant--namely, that his fair client, between the sticks of her fan, was studying his face with more than feminine curiosity. When he paused she said-- "_Bueno!_ That is what I told her." "Is there anything more?"--"Perhaps!" Arthur folded his arms and looked attentive. Donna Dolores began to go over the sticks of her fan one by one, as if it were a rosary.