Brandon of the Engineers

It was a hot evening and Clare sat at a table in the patio, trying to

read. The light was bad, for buzzing insects hovered about the lamp, but

the house had not cooled down yet and she wanted to distract her troubled

thoughts. Footsteps and voices rose from the street outside, where the

citizens were passing on their way to the plaza, but the sounds were

faint and muffled by the high walls. The house had been built in times

when women were jealously guarded and a dwelling was something of a fort.

Now, with the iron gate in the narrow, arched entrance barred, the girl

was securely cut off from the exotic life of the city.

This isolation was sometimes a comfort, but it sometimes jarred. Clare

was young, and fond of cheerful society, and the iron gate had its

counterpart in another barrier, invisible but strong, that shut her out

from much she would have enjoyed. She often stood, so to speak, gazing

wistfully between the bars at innocent pleasures in which she could not

join. Kenwardine, in spite of his polished manners, was tactfully avoided

by English and Americans of the better class, and their wives and

daughters openly showed their disapproval.

At length Clare gave up the attempt to read. She felt lonely and

depressed. Nobody had been to the house since Kenwardine left, and Dick

and Jake were away. She did not see Dick often and he was, of course,

nothing to her; for one thing, he was in some mysterious way her father's

enemy. Still, she missed him; he was honest, and perhaps, if things had

been different---Then she turned her head sharply as she heard the click of a bolt. This

was strange, because Lucille had locked the gate. She could not see it in

the gloom of the arch, but it had certainly opened. Then as she waited

with somewhat excited curiosity a dark figure appeared on the edge of the

light, and she put down her book as Richter came forward. He made very

little noise and stopped near the table.

"How did you get in?" she asked.

Richter smiled. "You have forgotten that Herr Kenwardine gave me a key."

"I didn't know he had," Clare answered. "But won't you sit down?"

He moved a chair to a spot where his white clothes were less conspicuous,

though Clare noted that he did so carelessly and not as if he wished to

hide himself. Then he put a small linen bag on the table.

"This is some money that belongs to Herr Kenwardine; you may find it

useful. It is not good to be without money in a foreign town."

Clare looked at him with alarm. He was fat and generally placid, but his

philosophical good humor was not so marked as usual.