"Good heavens!" Ralph ejaculated, glancing incredulously at the white, rounded arms and the long, slim, tapering fingers. "You kill a pig! Do you do all the work of this house? Is there no one else here to help you?" "Oh, yes, Señor," the girl laughed. "There is Isabella, an old woman who comes here every day to do all the hard rough work, and my aunt, but there are certain jobs they can't do because their eyesight is not very good, and their hands lack the skill. The gentleman looks shocked, but is there anything so very dreadful in killing a pig? One slash and it is quickly done--very quickly. We have to live somehow, and, after all, the Señor is a soldier--he follows the vocation of killing!" "Oh, yes, it is all very well for big, rough men. One somehow associates them with deeds of violence and bloodshed. But with beautiful, dainty girls like you it is different. You should shudder at the very thought of blood, and be all pity and compassion." "But not for pigs," the girl laughed, "nor for Señors. Now please go in and sit in the parlour, or my aunt will hear me talking to you and accuse me of wasting my time." Ralph reluctantly obeyed, and drawing his chair close up to the parlour fire--for the summer evenings in Spain are often very chilly--was soon deeply absorbed in plans and speculations as to the future. After supper, when the young girl came into the room to clear the table, Ralph noticed that she was once again wearing the gay apparel she had worn earlier in the day; and all in red, even to the ribbons in her hair, she seemed to be dressed more coquettishly than ever. She was also inclined to be more communicative, and in response to Ralph's invitation to partake of a glass of wine with him, she fetched an armchair and came and planted it close beside him. Pretty as he had thought her before, she now appeared to him to be indescribably lovely, and the longer he stared at her, stared into the depths of her large, beautifully shaped purplish grey eyes, the more and more hopelessly enslaved did he become, till, in the end, he realised she had him completely at her mercy, and that he was most madly and desperately in love with her. They drank together, and so absorbed was he in gazing at her eyes--indeed he never ceased gazing at them--that he did not observe what he was drinking or how many times she filled up his glass. If she had given him a poisoned goblet, it would have been all the same, he would have drained it off and kissed her hands and feet with his dying breath. "Now, Señor," she said at length, after he had held her hand to his lips and literally smothered it in kisses, "now, Señor, it is time for you to go to bed. We do not keep late hours here, and to-morrow, Señor, if he is still in the same state of mind, will have plenty of time for repeating to me his sentiments." "To-morrow," Ralph stuttered. "To-morrow, that is a tremendous way off, and isn't it to-morrow that that fellow O'Flanagan is coming?"