She was lying on a couch, swathed in a crimson silk wrap and fanning herself gently with a huge feather fan, over which the great black eyes shone like lamps. "Señora," said Lord Deseret in Spanish, with the suspicion of a smile in the corners of his eyes, "may I be allowed the pleasure of introducing to you some young friends of mine?" And she struck at him playfully with the plume of feathers, disclosing for a moment a laughing mouth and a set of fine white teeth. And Jim thought she looked hardly as young as her eyes and her feet would have led one to suppose. "Do you understand Spanish?" she asked of Jim, in English. "No, I'm sorry to say----" "Then you see, milord, it is not _comme il faut_ to speak it where it is not understood." And she laughed again. "I stand corrected, madame. We will not speak our native tongue. This is my young friend, James Carron." And Jim, gazing with all his heart at the wonderful dancer, got a vivid impression of a rich dark Southern face, and a pair of great liquid black eyes glowing upon him through the tantalising undulations of the great dusky fan, which wafted to and fro with the methodic regularity of a metronome. "And this is Lord Charles Denham. Both gallant Hussars, and both aching to show the colour of their blood against your friends of St. Petersburg." "Ah, the horror!" she said gently. "But you do not look bloodthirsty, Mr. Carron." And the great black eyes seemed to look Jim through and through. "I don't think I am really, you know. But if there is to be fighting one looks for chances, of course." "And the chance always of death," she said gravely. "One takes that, of course." "But it is always the next man who is going to be killed, madame," struck in Charlie. "Oneself is always immune. Lord Deseret was at Waterloo, yet here he is, very much alive and as sound as a bell." "He had the good fortune. May you both have as good!" "They were anxious to express to you their admiration of your dancing, madame," said Lord Deseret. "But we seem to have fallen upon more solemn subjects." "I have never seen anything like it," said Jim. "It is exquisite beyond words, a veritable dream," said the more gifted Charlie. "Ah, well, it seems to please people, and so it is a pleasure to me also. You are from--where, Mr. Carron?" "From the north--from Carne,--the Carrons of Carrie, you know." The dusky plume wafted noiselessly to and fro in front of her face, and its pace did not vary by the fraction of a hair's breadth. Over it, and through it, the great black eyes rested on his face in curiously thoughtful inquisition. Suddenly, with an almost invisible jerk of the head, she beckoned him to closer converse, and holding the fan as a screen invited him inside it, so to speak. "Do you play?" she asked gently. "Very little," he said in surprise. "I have only my pay and an allowance, you see."