Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/93

 and struck the ground softly a little distance from where he stood.

Don Roberto and his companion were approaching along the broad roadway that ran down beneath the old encina to the gate; there was no time to search for the thing she had let fall. Henderson could not see anything against the intensified darkness of the bare ground. Some trifle, he supposed, that a branch had wrested from her. He hoped Don Roberto and his friend would pass.

"Ha, it is our friend, Don Gabriel,' Roberto said, applying the name of honor to his valet in slurring levity.

"Keeping a tryst for a lady," the one who walked with him laughed. He stooped, his foot striking something in the dark. "And by my life, here is her shoe! Don Roberto, we have broken a romance; we have frightened her away."