"Again you are speaking of that subject. I have known you but an hour, and you talk of nothing but my father, of me, of coming to call." "Well, I can't think of anything else." "You are too bold. Spanish fathers do not like such young men. But to hear me talk!" She flushed slightly. "I have lost all modesty to speak of those things. You force me to embarrass myself." "I was an instantaneous success with Miss Torres' father. He was ready to send a dray for my trunks." "Let us discuss other things." "I haven't the strength. You once spoke of a chap your people had picked out. It isn't-Alfarez?" She let her dark eyes rest upon his a moment, and his senses swam. Then she nodded slowly. "You do not like him?" "Just like a nose-bleed. The day you and I are married I'm going to send him a wreath of poison ivy." "It pleases you always to joke." "No joke about that. You won't give in, will you?" "There is no question of force nor of surrender, senor. I insist now that we shall speak of other things." A few moments later he was constrained to rejoin his hostess' party. "When are you going back to Las Savannas?" he asked, as he reluctantly arose. "To-morrow." "The hunting ought to be good-" But she frowned at him in annoyance, and he left her, after all, without knowing whether he had gained or lost ground. Of one thing only he was sure-their meeting had been in some respects a disappointment. She was not by any means so warm and impulsive as he had supposed. Her girlishness, her simplicity, her little American ways, cloaked a deep reserve and a fine sense of the difference in their positions. She could be Spanish enough when she chose, he perceived, and he felt, as he was intended to feel, that the little lady of quality he had met to-night would be much harder to win than the girl of the woods. The plague of it was that, if anything, he was more in love with the definite and dazzling Gertrudis Garavel than he had been with the mysteriously alluring Chiquita. If only she were all American, or even all Spanish, perhaps he would know better how to act. But, unfortunately, she was both-just enough of both to be perplexing and wholly unreliable. And then, too, there was Alfarez! XX AN AWAKENING