The fierce stranger, however, seemed undecided. His brow furrowed, and for the moment he only stared. Jacqueline peeped through the lashes curtaining her eyes. She wanted to see his face, and she saw one of bold lines. The chin was a hard right angle. The mouth was a cruel line between heavily sensuous lips. The nose was a splendid line, and a very assertive and insolent nose altogether. The forehead was rugged, with a free curving sweep. Here there would have been a certain nobility, only its slope was just a hint too low. The skin was tawny. The moustache was black and bristling, as was also the thick hair, which lay back like grass before a breeze. The shaggy eyebrows were parted by deep clefts, the dark corrugations of frowning. One wondered if the man did not turn the foreboding scowl on and off by design. But all these were matters that fitted in with the other striking "properties," and Jacqueline was fairly well satisfied with her Fra Diavolo. As she declared to herself, here was the very dramatic presence to mount upon a war charger! [Illustration: "RODRIGO GALAN" "The fierce stranger, however, seemed undecided. His brow furrowed, and for the moment he only stared"] Now when Jacqueline peeped--there was something irresistible about it--the furrows in the black-beetled brow smoothed themselves out, whether the stranger meant them to or not. And a vague resolve took hold on him, and quickened his breath. Her glance might have been invitation--Tampico was not a drawing room--but still he hesitated. There was a certain hauteur in the set of the demoiselle's head, which outbalanced the mischief in her eyes. He felt an indefinable severity in her tempting beauty, and this was new to his philosophy of woman. But as he drank in further details, his resolve stiffened. That Grecian bend to her crisp skirt was evidently an extreme from the Rue de la Paix, foretelling the end of stupendous flounces. Then there was the tilt to the large hat, and the veil falling to the level of the eyes, and the disquieting charm of both. The wine-red lips had a way of smiling and curling at the same time. And still again there was that line of the neck, from the shoulder up to where it hid under the soft, old-gold tendrils, and that line was a thing of beauty and seductive mystery. The dreadful ranchero went down in humility before the splendor of the tantalizing Parisienne. Michel Ney leaned nearer over the table. "In all conscience, mademoiselle, your Fra Diavolo is bizarre enough," he said, "but please don't let us stir him up. Think, if anything should happen to you, why Mexico, why France would----" "You flatter!" she mocked him. "Only two empires to keep me out of a flirtation? It's not enough, Michel." A shadow fell over them. "My apologies," spoke a deep voice, "but the senorita, she is going to the City, to the Capital, perhaps?"