It was delightful to be taught by a beautiful Spaniard who was so
gracious and intense and magnetic of personality, and by a sweet
American girl who moment by moment forgot her shyness. Gale
wished to prolong the lessons.
So that was the beginning of many afternoons in which he learned
desert lore and Spanish verbs, and something else that he dared
not name.
Nell Burton had never shown to Gale that daring side of her
character which had been so suggestively defined in Belding's
terse description and Ladd's encomiums, and in her own audacious
speech and merry laugh and flashing eye of that never-to-be-forgotten
first meeting. She might have been an entirely different girl.
But Gale remembered; and when the ice had been somewhat broken
between them, he was always trying to surprise her into her real self.
There were moments that fairly made him tingle with expectation.
Yet he saw little more than a ghost of her vivacity, and never
a gleam of that individuality which Belding had called a devil.
On the few occasions that Dick had been left alone with her
in the patio Nell had grown suddenly unresponsive and
restrained, or she had left him on some transparent pretext.
On the last occasion Mercedes returned to find Dick staring
disconsolately at the rose-bordered path, where Nell had evidently
vanished. The Spanish girl was wonderful in her divination.
"Senor Dick!" she cried.
Dick looked at her, soberly nodded his head, and then he laughed.
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