"You flatter yourself, senor," she said, with a disdainful glance and a note of contempt in her sweet voice. "Unless you are entirely ignorant of English conventionalities, your remarks are unpardonable. Would you care to repeat to Mr. Standish, to whom I am engaged to be married, what you have just said?"
"Yes, if you so desire," responded Don Carlos calmly.
"Conventionalities--English or otherwise--do not concern me. I follow the dictates of my heart in all things, and I am master of my own destiny. Shall I tell your Mr. Standish that I fell in love with you the first moment I saw you, and that I mean to take you from him by hook or by crook?"
"I think you must be crazy!" exclaimed Myra, at heart just a little scared, but more than a little fascinated. "Surely even in the wilds of Spain it is considered dishonourable to attempt to make love to a girl who is betrothed to another man?
"Not if one is prepared to fight the other man," Don Carlos replied, with a sudden smile. "I am quite prepared to fight for you, believe me. As for making love, dear lady, I have not even yet begun to make love to you in earnest. My love is a raging torrent which will overwhelm you and sweep you off your feet, a raging fire which will set your heart aflame in sympathy."
"I"m thinking, Don Carlos, that you must be a bit Irish yourself to mix up torrents and flames, and the sooner you let the torrent put your fires out the better I"ll be pleased," said Myra, with forced lightness, after a pause, during which she decided it would be best to treat the whole matter as a joke. "Incidentally, you are carrying your jest too far, and I shall be seriously annoyed if you persist in this nonsense."
"Even if I have mixed my metaphors, senorita, I a.s.sure you I have never been more serious in my life," Don Carlos retorted. "May I call on you to-morrow to convince you of that fact?"
"No, thank you, senor," answered Myra. "And if you are really in earnest, I shall instruct the servants that I am never at home to Don Carlos de Ruiz."
"You are cruel, dear lady, but I warn you I am not to be rebuffed,"
said Don Carlos. "Love will surely find a way."
The music ceased as he spoke, and Myra disengaged herself from his encircling arm and darted away from him, glad to escape. She could not have a.n.a.lysed her own feelings, and found herself at a loss to know how to deal with the situation. To complain to Tony Standish seemed futile. Tony, if she told him what had happened, would, of course, be indignant and demand an explanation, and Myra felt sure in her own mind he would come off second best if there was a scene and a personal encounter.
"Sure, and is it frightened you are of the conceited Spaniard?" she asked herself. "You"ve prided yourself on being a match for any man, and being able to keep any ardent suitor at arm"s length, and here you are in a funk! It"s ashamed of you I am, Myra Rostrevor!"
She did actually feel ashamed of herself for being so disturbed by Don Carlos"s extravagant words, and mentally decided she would snub him severely at the first opportunity.
The opportunity presented itself sooner than she antic.i.p.ated. Next afternoon she strolled into her aunt"s drawing room, and her heart gave a queer little convulsive jump when she found Lady Fermanagh engaged in animated conversation with Don Carlos.
"Myra, dear, I"m so glad you have come in," exclaimed her aunt. "Allow me to introduce Don Carlos de Ruiz. Don Carlos, my niece, Miss Myra Rostrevor."
Don Carlos was en his feet, and he bowed low smilingly.
"Miss Rostrevor and I have already been introduced, dear lady, but I did not know the senorita was your niece," he said. "What a delightful surprise! I had the honour of dancing with Miss Rostrevor last night at Lady Trencrom"s ball."
As on the previous night, Myra found herself somewhat at a loss. She gave him her hand, and he bowed over it, holding it a moment longer than necessary. At that moment a footman appeared at the drawing room door.
"Pardon, your ladyship," he said. "The Countess of Carbis wishes to speak to you on the telephone."
"Good! I particularly want to speak to her," said Lady Fermanagh, rising. "Excuse me, Don Carlos. Myra, my dear, give Don Carlos some tea."
Don Carlos laughed softly as the door closed behind her ladyship, and his dark eyes were sparkling wickedly as he looked at Myra.
"Did I not warn you, sweet lady, that love would find a way?" he said.
"We have a proverb in Spain that the way to make sure of winning a girl is to make love to her mother. As you have no mother, I made love last night to Lady Fermanagh, who, I was told, is your guardian, and she invited me to call. Hence my presence here. The fates are kind, and now I can make love to you in earnest. Myra, darling, my heart is all afire with love for you, and all my being is crying out for you."
Myra drew herself up to her full height, regarding him disdainfully and endeavouring to put all the hauteur she could summon up into her manner and expression.
"Here in England, Don Carlos, we call a man a cad who persists in attempting to force his unwanted attentions on a girl," she remarked icily. "I do not know if there is a Spanish equivalent for the word cad."
""Cad"? Let me think," drawled Don Carlos, seemingly not a whit rebuffed, his dark eyes still twinkling mischievously. "In Spanish, "cad" would be "mozo" or "caballerizo." "Caballerear" means to set up for a gentleman. You must let me teach you Spanish, Myra. It is an ideal language in which to make love. Let me tell you in Spanish that I love you, that you are the most beautiful, adorable, fascinating and seductive girl I have ever met, the loveliest and most enticing creature ever created, the woman of my dreams, my ideal, and my predestined mate."
"Let me tell you in plain English that you are the most impudent, offensive and exasperating man I have ever met!" exclaimed Myra, shaken by a gust of angry resentment. "I don"t want to talk to you, senor, and I repeat that you are behaving like a cad!"
Don Carlos sighed lugubriously and turned up his eyes to the ceiling.
"I am spurned!" he lamented, as if soliloquising. "I am desolated!
The most wonderfully beautiful girl in the world rebuffs me and calls me a cad when I offer her my heart and the love for which many another woman would barter her very soul! My Myra thinks I am the most exasperating and impudent man in the world! Condenacion! Still, I must be unique in one respect!" He lowered his eyes to look at Myra again. "So this is English hospitality, senorita!" he resumed, after a pause. "The Lady Fermanagh, your charming aunt, told you to offer me tea, but not even a spoonful have you proffered me."
He a.s.sumed such an absurdly pathetic expression that Myra laughed in spite of herself, and quite forgot to continue to be angry and offended.
"You are an utterly impossible person, Don Carlos," she commented, dimpling into smiles. "Sit down and let me give you tea and anything else you want."
"Ten thousand thanks, Myra!" cried Don Carlos. "How wonderful!
Anything else I want! The tea does not matter, but I want ten thousand kisses from the woman who has entranced and enraptured my heart. I want to hold you in my arms, Myra mine, clasped close to my breast, to set your darling heart afire with burning kisses, to kiss the heart out of you then kiss it back again all aflame with love and longing. Myra, darling, I love you as I have never loved before, and I want you for my wife."
He stretched out his arms as if to enfold Myra in them, but she evaded him adroitly. She had been listening half-fascinated, conscious of the spell of his personality, thrilled by the pa.s.sionate tones of his deep, musical voice, but she broke the spell and recovered herself in an instant.
"Quite an effective piece of play-acting!" she remarked, forcing a laugh. "You really should be on the stage, Don Carlos, or acting for the movies. I feel sure you would be a success as a film actor, and all the flappers would lose their hearts to you. Will you have some tea?"
"Myra, I am not acting," Don Carlos protested, at last showing signs of chagrin. "I am in deadly earnest. I love you and want you, and the Devil himself will not prevent me from making you my own."
"His Satanic Majesty need not concern himself with the affair at all, at all," retorted Myra, regarding him coldly. "Let me save him the trouble by a.s.suring you that your eloquent and melodramatic protestations of love leave me cold, and your boast that no woman has ever been able to resist you inspired me only with contempt for your conceit. Let me remind you again, also, that I am engaged to be married to Mr. Antony Standish, and a.s.sure you I have not the slightest intention of transferring my affections from an English gentleman to a Spaniard who evidently prides himself on being a sort of modern Don Juan."
Don Carlos"s face went white beneath the tan as he listened to the scathing words, and a gleam of anger flashed into his dark eyes.
"You do me an injustice, and I think you are doing your own heart an injustice, Myra," he said, in a curiously quiet voice, after a momentary pause. "If----"
"I object to your calling me by my Christian name," Myra interposed abruptly, intent on snubbing him. "May I remind you we met for the first time yesterday. I can hardly imagine that in your own country you would dare to call a girl "Myra" a few hours after meeting her for the first time."
"My dear Miss Rostrevor, I can lay my hand on my heart and a.s.sure you on my word of honour that never in Spain have I ever called a girl "Myra," either within a few hours or a few years of our first meeting,"
said Don Carlos, his eyes beginning to twinkle again. "That may be explained by the fact that I have never heard the name before. But I think it is a charming name, which somehow fits you. Incidentally, senorita, may I venture to point out that you have been addressing me as "Don Carlos," instead of as "Senor de Ruiz"? You have been calling me by my Christian name."
"That was only because I thought "Don" was a sort of Spanish equivalent of "Sir" in English," Myra responded, somewhat taken aback. "Here I should address a Knight or a Baronet as "Sir Charles" without the slightest idea of being familiar, but I should not expect him to respond by addressing me as "Myra." Do I make myself plain?"
"Dear lady, you could never make yourself plain, you who are so beautiful, but you are explicit," answered Don Carlos with a radiant smile that made him look quite boyish. "I stand rebuked, Myra, but I am impenitent. Surely one is not committing a crime by calling the girl one loves by her Christian name? I would prefer to call you cara mia or querida, which are the Spanish equivalents for my beloved and sweetheart, but, of course, as you seem to think I----"
"Senor de Ruiz, I have had enough of this nonsense!" Myra interrupted, impatiently. "Your attempts at love-making are utterly distasteful, and if you imagine you are going to add me to your list of conquests you are a case for a mental specialist."
"Alas!" exclaimed Don Carlos, and again sighed heavily. "You seem to think I am a sort of mountebank who makes a hobby of paying court to women. You misjudge me, Myra. True, I have made love to women before, true, many have fallen in love with me and thrown themselves at my head--as you say in English. True----"
"You are boasting again," interposed Myra once more. "I have no desire or inclination to listen to an account of your amorous conquests."
"But you must listen, Myra," said Don Carlos earnestly. "You misjudge me. True, there have been many women in my life, but not one who inspired love, not one to whom I offered my heart, not one whom I had any wish to marry. Long ago it was foretold by a gipsy gifted with second sight that I should meet my fate in my thirty-fifth year in a foreign land, meet my ideal, the woman of my dreams. That prophecy has come true. The moment our eyes first met yesterday I knew you were the woman for whom I had been seeking and waiting. It is useless to fight against destiny, Myra. I shall win you by hook or by crook, and make you all mine."
"That sounds like a challenge, Don Carlos," retorted Myra with forced lightness. "As you believe in gipsy forecasts, however, let me tell you that a gipsy woman "read my hand" a few years ago, warned me to beware of a tall, dark man, and foretold that I should marry a tall, fair man. If she was right, you are obviously the tall, dark man of whom I am to beware, just as Tony Standish is the man I am destined to marry."
"Pouf! I pay no heed to the foolish prattle of so-called gipsy fortune-tellers," said Don Carlos, smiling again. "The seer who foretold that I should meet and win you was King of the Spanish Gypsies, and his every prophecy comes true."
"Well, to make his prophecy come true as far as you are concerned, Don Carlos, you will have to fall in love with someone other than me,"
responded Myra. "Hadn"t you better have some tea, senor?"