Page:Gaston Leroux--The bride of the sun.djvu/64

50 bump at the back. The third was almost square, resembling nothing so much as a small valise.

Maria-Teresa shrank before this triple horror and, despite his evident curiosity, drew her fiancé away from the violated sepulchre. They strolled down to the beach, where the Pacific murmured gently as it came to rest on the sands. So peaceful is the sea at Ancon, so free from currents and gales, that it has become the great resort of the inhabitants of Lima. At this season, however, it was still deserted, so that Dick and Maria-Teresa met nobody during their walk to the Marquis' villa.

It was dusk when they reached it, still under the depressing influence of the three strange heads, and vainly trying to joke the impression away. As the sun disappeared on the horizon, the wind rose and conjured up in the half-light pale sand-whorls which might have been so many phantoms dancing up from the huacas to reproach them for impiety and sacrilege. Though they were neither of them over-imaginative, the young people were glad to see the fat major-domo who came forward to announce that the Marquis and Uncle Francis had already arrived. He, at fall events, was solid flesh and blood. As Maria-Teresa entered the house, a little Quichua maid, Concha, literally threw herself at