Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/81

 porticoes in the eyes of the palpitating beauties whom they lately had relinquished from their arms in the furious dance.

Henderson's duty was to proceed with respectful dignity, as became a gentleman reduced from his own estate attendant on one whose authority and magnificence he never could hope to equal, throw the bright satin cape around Don Roberto's shoulders, present his flat Spanish hat, proffer his cigarettes with downcast eyes. All this done, according to previous instructions, he took his stand at the door to relieve the young caballero of his trappings when he came again to join the dance.

Alert, muscular, his head held high, a glimmer of something that was nearer amusement than contempt in his lively blue eyes, Henderson drew many a glance, many a wondering, warm sympathetic look from the fair ones who danced that afternoon across Don Abrahan's polished floor. There was no man in the company as handsome in the manly strength that the female eye so quickly and surely appraises.

Don Roberto had ordered Henderson's long, unruly hair shorn short. His shapely head was revealed to added advantage by this sacrifice, the short hair glistening like the scales of a new-caught perch when he crossed the slant sunbeams falling through the windows upon the great hall floor. The barber had spared him a foretop which betrayed its crinkled unruliness under the pomade