Page:Jepson--Pollyooly.djvu/303

 "How clever of you! How ever did you do it?" cried the Esmeralda.

"By the intensity of her forbidding gaze," said the Honorable John Ruffin.

It soon grew plain that Diego Perez had come to England in pursuit of the Esmeralda, and he became her yellow shadow. He took up his abode at the Savoy; and she hardly ever came out of her rooms without finding him, bowing and smiling with a conquering air, somewhere on her path to the street.

He was always at the stage-door to greet her as she came out after her performance. Did she lunch or dine at a restaurant, he sat gazing at her in his passionate way. Every day he sent her flowers—to her rooms and to the theater; sometimes there was a bracelet or a ring with the flowers; always there was a note, ill-spelled, perhaps, but very passionate.

Sometimes among the passion was an invitation to lunch or dinner; sometimes an invitation to accompany the adoring writer to a wanner climate and dwell in a palace. Whenever he got a few words with the object of his passionate adoration he would prefer this petition orally, and ever with a firmer insistence; twice he talked of procuring a special