they entered it. They had never seen her so animated, or with such a fine color in her cheeks.
"It was lovely!" she said breathlessly. "They did splash and grunt."
She was still smiling a happy, angel smile when they reached the Temple.
The next morning the Honorable John Ruffin made a point of attending Señor Perez's first public appearance in England—at the Police Court. He found him very hazy; so did the interpreter, the magistrate, and the evening papers. It may be that the police had confused his wits; it may have been the cold water. But his immersion in the left-hand fountain in Trafalgar Square remained a mystery.
The Honorable John Ruffin thought that the chastened Montevidean remained obscure in his account of his ducking from a desire that it should not be generally known that he had been persecuting the Esmeralda. Plainly he was a wiser man than he had supposed. Perhaps, like a social reformer, he had acquired wisdom in Trafalgar Square.
They saw him no more; his ardor had been thoroughly damped; and the cloud lifted from the Esmeralda's light spirits. It did not fall on them again
