The Dutch girl, standing patiently beside us, had looked first at one face and then at the other as we talked. We were all by this time in a long, low parlor, warmed by a pretty closed fireplace covered with glazed tiles. On the shelves of a great armoire, or dresser, at one end of the room appeared a fine show of silver plate. At the other end stood a tall linen-press of walnut-wood, handsomely carved; and even the gratings of the windows and the handles of the doors were of hammered iron-work. There were no rushes on the floor, which was made of small pieces of wood delicately joined and set together and brightly polished. But everything in sight was clean and trim to a degree which would have shamed our great house at Coton, where the rushes sometimes lay for a week unchanged. With each glance round I felt a livelier satisfaction. I turned to Mistress Dymphna. "Señorita!" I said, mustering my noblest accent. "Beso los pies de usted! Habla usted Castillano?" Mistress Anne stared, while the effect on the girl whom I addressed was greater than I had looked for, but certainly of a different kind. She started and drew back, an expression of offended dignity and of something like anger ruffling her placid face. Did she not understand? Yes, for after a moment's hesitation, and with a heightened color, she answered, "Si, Señor." Her constrained manner was not promising, but I was going on to open a conversation if I could--for it looked little grateful of us to stand there speechless and staring--when Mistress Anne interposed. "What did you say to her? What was it?" she asked eagerly. "I asked her if she spoke Spanish. That was all," I replied, my eyes on Dymphna's face, which still betrayed trouble of some kind, "except that I paid her the usual formal compliment. But what is she saying to her father?" It was like the Christmas game of cross-questions. The girl and I had spoken in Spanish. I translated what we had said into English for Mistress Anne, and Mistress Dymphna turned it into Dutch for her father; an anxious look on her face which needed no translation. "What is it?" asked Master Bertie, observing that something was wrong. "It is nothing--nothing!" replied the merchant apologetically, though, as he spoke, his eyes dwelt on me curiously. "It is only that I did not know that you had a Spaniard in your company." "A Spaniard?" Master Bertie answered. "We have none. This," pointing to me, "is our very good friend and faithful follower, Master Carey--an Englishman." "To whom," added the Duchess, smiling gravely, "I am greatly indebted."