Nor was he a particle sorry, since Jerome had long played the heartless role of an adventurer, and many had suffered because of his belief that the world owed him a living. The evening wore on, and Roderic began to imagine he was doomed to disappointment. Lovely faces he had seen, but not the one for which his heart yearned. Some of the ladies wore veils, their exceeding modesty preventing them from showing their faces in such a mixed assemblage, a custom that undoubtedly descended from royal blood desirous of being distinguished from the plebeian. Still Roderic had full assurance that his eyes could discover the girl he loved, even though she stood among a score of veiled companions--there is an individuality in the carriage, little peculiarities about the movement of hands and head that appeal to the keen eye of Love, and cannot be mistaken. So Roderic, wise man, reasoned, as with a single glance he decided that this one or that was not Georgia. So others of his sex have decided in times past, and mayhap paid the penalty of their folly. As the secret agent was cruising around that side of the plaza where the band had taken up its quarters, while making a last selection, he received a shock without the least warning by suddenly coming face to face with a dashing looking Spaniard whose gay dress proclaimed him some public performer. Roderic gritted his teeth at sight of his yellow skinned adversary of the past, for this was no other than Julio, the handsome dancer of the _bolero_, a man whose life had been one long succession of conquests in the arena of Love, and over whom half the town had at times gone wild. He had _gitano_ or gypsy blood in his veins, through his mother, which doubtless accounted in a measure for the _diablerie_ of his appearance, and his success among the fair sex, for there is to many women a fascination in anything bordering upon the tempestuous, the wild and eerie. It was only natural that Roderic, coming thus upon the man he had hated so bitterly in the past, should grind his teeth and feel a mad desire to plant his fist square between those black dare devil eyes that had wrought such accursed mischief for years back. Then he remembered that it was all a mistake--that he had no valid reason for assaulting the idol of San Juan save in the capacity of a general defender of the weaker sex, a modern Don Quixote, and that would hardly be politic.