She, on her part, appreciated my services with lively gratitude, and, when we arrived at a hotel in her place of refuge, she would not listen to the idea of my wandering about the house and town, but insisted on my dining with her in her own apartments. To say that I willingly assented to the proposition, is not an expression that conveys any idea of the alacrity and enthusiasm, subdued by strict restraints of etiquette, with which I told her I should only be too much overjoyed and honored.
Let it here be understood that there was not a particle of love, or intrigue, or adventure, or romance in this affair. I never, for a moment, lost sight of the purely business nature of my mission, and she had too much at stake, just then, to risk the slightest chance of being so much as suspected of indiscretion.
In point of fact, our brief association ended in smoke, and nothing else, and it is only by way way of introduction to this fumigative upshot, that I have said so much about an incident which I will permit no one to identify with, the life of any celebrated character, alive or dead.
She was exceedingly frank and free in conduct and conversation while the dinner lasted, but it was what she did afterward that specially impressed itself upon my memory. Producing a beautifully-ornamented little case, she handed it across the table to me, saying, interrogatively:
"Take a weed?"
Two years before I had, through much tribulation and with many diaphragmatic pangs, acquired the accomplishment of consuming weeds, and with such success as to be looked upon as rather an "inveterate" of my age. I, therefore, accepted the proffered luxury, and, as I said before, a most magnificent cigar it was.
What I did or said, or experienced, however, is of no consequence in this connection. Why I have spoken of the episode at so much length is because this was the first time I had seen a woman of refined tastes smoke!
I had heard she did it, and was not wholly unprepared to see her produce a paper of cigarettes, and indulge in half a one or so; but the weed she used was a legitimate cigar, of small size, it is true, but of the genuine Cabañas brand. There was an inexpressible charm about the manner of her smoking! The ease, the grace, the unconventional abandon of position and gesture, made her appear to me then, as memory makes her appear now, the exponent of all that was delicate, picturesque, elegant and exquisite in the way of female smoking. If ever woman and the weed could be looked upon as harmonizing it was in her. If ever the combination was relieved of every particle of repulsiveness, and rendered grand and gracious, it was by her. She was the epitome of the
