Over, who was probably afraid of nothing under the sun, was looking at her in alarm. “You know I have always said that you must not go out alone in Spain,” he said, authoritatively. “And there is danger quite aside from your beauty. Not only are all Americans supposed by the ignorant, rapacious lower classes of Europe to be phenomenally wealthy, but Californians in particular. And doubtless California is a legend with the Spaniard. I am not given to melodrama, but there is a desperate lot over in the Albaicin.” “I don’t see what could happen to me in broad daylight, and certainly I am not going to run after you or ‘Lolly’ every time I want to go out. What a bore!” “Not for me. I wish you would promise—” “Well, I’ll be careful,” she said, lightly. “I have no desire for adventures of that sort. They must be horribly dirty over in the Albaicin, and after our experience with Spanish banks it might be some time before I could be ransomed.” The Albaicin might be dirty and abandoned to wickedness, but they decided, as they leaned over the parapet of the Plaza de los Aljibes before entering the palace, there was no doubt of its picturesqueness. Far beneath them sparkled the Darro, and beyond it, parallel with the Alhambra Hill, rising from the plain almost to the very top of the steep mountain spur, was another vast roof of pinkish-gray tiles. But here they could distinguish one or two narrow streets, mere cuts in a bed of rock, from their perch, and high balconies full of flowers between the Moorish arches, a glimpse of bright interiors, the towers and patios of a great convent where the nuns walked among the orange-trees and the pomegranates, the roses and geraniums. Not a sound rose from the ancient city; it might have been as dead as the turbulent race that made its history. It lay steeping, swimming, in the pink light that seemed to rise like a vapor from its roofs. It looked like some huge stone tablet of antiquity, with hieroglyphics raised that the blind might read. “I shall come and look at this in every light,” said Catalina, “so if I disappear you will know where to find me.” They entered the palace through the little door in the non-committal wall, and, after bribing the guide to let them alone, lingered for a time in the Court of Myrtles, where the orange-trees no longer grow beside the pool, but where the arcades and overhanging gallery are as graceful as when the court was the centre of life of the Comares Palace, first in this group of palaces. Then, through an arcade that abutted into a fairy-like pavilion, they entered the Court of Lions.