Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/95

 these fast-maturing youths; rather a sober and melancholy type, her gray eyes wise and clear of the small pretenses and subterfuges of feminine vanity. There was a thinness in her cheek, as if whetted by a sorrow, the reflection of trouble in her eyes. This he remembered, picturing her again, swiftly, as he stood trying to make fast a line to his swirling thoughts.

He must get hold of the shoe; he must create some sort of diversion that would lead the two strollers away from the tree, whatever their curious humor to pry into his supposed romance might be. The girl must be brought down out of the tree and taken to the house by some sequestered way, and all must be done in a matter of minutes, before her absence from the side of her duenna could connect her with the lost shoe.

The two young men had stopped beneath the tree, laughing over their discovery. Henderson feared the girl's fright might betray her, not knowing how improbable it was that a Mexican gentleman would look in a tree for a lady, though the rustling of her movement might be plain in his ears.

"What kind of a shoe is this—a sheepskin sandal?" Don Roberto inquired, a laugh in his voice over the thought of this interrupted lovescene between his valet and some day-laborer's girl. "Come to the moonlight with this precious discovery, Don Fernando; let us see."

Don Fernando, the young man who had stum-