she brought them was worth the detour. The walls of the houses could hardly be seen, overgrown, as it were, with wooden galleries and balconies. Some of them were for all the world like finely carved boxes, adorned with a hundred arabesques—little rooms suspended in mid-air, with mysterious bars and trellised shutters, and strongly reminiscent of Peru or Bagdad. Only here it was not rare to see women’s faces half hidden in the shadows, though in no way hiding. For the ladies of Lima are famed for their beauty and coquetry. They were to be seen here in the streets, wearing the manta, that fine black shawl which is wrapped round the head and shoulders and which no woman in South America uses with so much grace as the girl of Lima. Like the haik of the Mor, the manta hides all but two great dark eyes, but its wearer can, when she wishes, throw it aside just enough to give a sweet glimpse of harmonious features and a complexion made even more white by the provoking shadow of the veil. Dick had this amply proved to him, and seemed so interested that Maria-Teresa began to scold.
“They are far too attractive in those mantas,” she said. “I shall show you some Europeans now.”
She turned the car up an adjoining street, which brought them to the new city, to broad roads and avenues opening up splendid vistas of the distant Andes. They crossed the Paseo Amancaes, which is the heart of the Mayfair of Lima, and Maria-Teresa several times exchanged bows with friends and acquaintances. Here the black manta was replaced by Paris hats overdressed from the rue de la Paix, for its discreet shadow is too discreet to be correct at nightfall. It was the hour at which all fashionable Lima was driving or walking, or gossiping in the tearooms, where one loiters happily over helados in an atmosphere of chiffons, flirting and politics. When they reached the Plaza Mayor, the first stars had risen on the horizon. The crowd was dense, and carriages advanced only at a walking pace. Women dressed as for the ball, with flowers in their dark curls, passed in open carriages. Young men grouped round a fountain in the center of the square, raised their hats and smiled into passing victorias.
“It really is strange,” murmured Maria-Teresa, “not an Indian in sight!”
“Do they generally come to this part of the city, then?”
“Yes, there are always some who come to watch the people come past....”
Standing in front of a café was a group of half-breeds, talking politics. One could distinctly hear the names of Garcia and Vointemilla, the president, neither of them treated over gently. One of the group, evidently a shopkeeper, was moaning his fears of a return to the era of pronunciamentos.
The car turned at the corner of the cathedral, and entered a rather narrow street. Seeing the way clear, Maria-Teresa put on speed only to pull up sharply a second later, just in time to avoid running down a man wrapped in a poncho, who stood motionless in the middle of the street. Both young people recognized him.
“Huascar!” exclaimed Maria-Teresa.
“Huascar, señorita, who begs you to take another road.”
“The road is free to all, Huascar. Stand aside.”
“Huascar has nothing more to say to the señorita. To pass, she must pass over Huascar.”
Dick half rose in his seat, as if to intervene, but Maria-Teresa put a hand on his sleeve.
“You behave very strangely, Huascar,” she said. “Why are there no Indians in the town to-day?”
“Huascar’s brethren do as they please, they are free men.”
She shrugged her shoulders, thought a moment, and began to turn the car round.
Before starting again, however, she spoke to the Indian, who had not moved.
“Are you always my friend, Huascar?”
For an answer, the Indian slowly raised his sombrero, and looked up to the early stars, as if calling them to witness. With a brief “Adios!” Maria-Teresa drove on.
When the motor stopped again, it was before a big house, the door-keeper of which rushed out to help his young mistress to alight. He was forestalled, however, by the Marquis de la Torre himself, who had just driven up, and who greeted the two Montgomerys with delight. “Enter, señor. This house is yours,” he said grandly to Uncle Francis.
The Marquis was a slim little gentleman of excessive smartness, dressed almost like a young man. When he moved and he was hardly ever still, he seemed to radiate brilliancy: from his eyes, his clothes, his jewels. But for all that, he was never undignified, and kept his grand manner without losing his vivacity in circumstances when others would have had to arm themselves with severity. Outside his club and the study of geographical questions he cared for nothing so much as romping with his son Christobal, a sturdy youngster of seven. At times one might have taken them for playmates on a holiday from the same school, filling the house with their noise, while little Isabella, who was nearly six, and loved ceremony, scolded them pompously, after the manner of an Infanta.
III
The Marquis de la Torre’s residence was half modern, half historical, with here and there quaint old-fashioned rooms and corners. Don Christobal was something of a collector, and had adorned his home with ancient paneling, carved galleries several centuries old, rude furniture dating back to before the conquest, faded tapestry—all so many relics of the various towns of old Peru which his ancestors had first sacked and then peopled. And each object recalled some anecdote or Story which the host detailed at length to all willing listeners.
It was in one of these historical corners that Mr. Montgomery and his nephew were presented to two old ladies—two Velasquez canvases brought to life, yet striving to retain all their pictorial dignity. Attired after a fashion long since forgotten, Aunt Agnes and her duenna might almost have been taken for antiques of Don Christobal’s collection: they lived altogether in another age, and their happiest moments were those passed in telling fear-inspiring legends. All the tales of old Peru had a home in this ancient room of theirs, and many an evening had been whiled away there by these narratives—the two Christobals, father and son, and little Infanta Isabella listening in one corner, while Maria-Teresa, at the other end of the room, went over her accounts and wrote her letters in a great splash of yellow lamplight.
Uncle Francis was delighted to meet in real life two such perfect types of the New Spain of yore, set in the very frame they needed. They were great friends at once, and the savant, taken to his own room, changed his clothes hurriedly to be able to rejoin them. At dinner, installed between the two, he begged for more legends, more stories. Maria-Teresa, thinking it time to talk of more serious matters, interrupted by telling her father of the trouble between the Indians and coolies.
When they heard that Maria-Teresa had discharged the Indians, Aunt Agnes shook her head doubtfully, and Irene openly expressed her disapproval. Both agreed that the young girl had acted imprudently, and particularly so on the eve of the Interaymi festival. This view was also taken by the Marquis, whose protest took an even more active form when he learned that Huascar had also left. Huascar had always been a very faithful servant, he argued, and his brusk departure was strange. Maria-Teresa explained shortly that for some time past Huascar’s manner had displeased her, and that she had let him know it.
“That is another matter,” said the Marquis.
“But I am no more comfortable about it… there is something in the air… the Indians are not behaving normally.... The other day, in the Plaza Mayor, I heard extraordinary remarks being made by some half-breeds to a couple of Quichua chiefs.”
“Yes, we did not meet a single Indian on the way from Callao, and I have not seen one in the city,” said Dick. “Why is that, I wonder?”
“Because
