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“A Scotch protégé of Dad’s is coming to-night,” said Concha; “he’ll probably travel down with Rory Dundas—I wonder if they’ll get on ... oh, Guy, I hadn’t noticed them before; what divine spats!”

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Arnold, “it’s that chap Munroe, I suppose. Look here, I don’t come down here so often, I think I might be left alone when I do, Mother,” and he turned angrily to the Doña. It was only in moments of irritation that he called her “mother.”

“And I think so, too. I told your father that you would not be pleased.”

“Well, of course, it’s come to this, that I’ll give up coming home at all,” and he savagely hacked himself a large slice of cake.

A look of terror crept into the Doña’s eyes—her children vanishing slowly, steadily, over the brow of a hill, while she stood rooted to the ground, was one of her nightmares.

Trying to keep the anger out of her voice, Teresa said, “The last time you were here there were no visitors at all, and the time before it was all your own friends.”

“Quite. But that is no reason....”