hood of the Gulf of Rosas), for faithful transportation inland, together with the various unlawful goods landed secretly from under the Tremolino's hatches.
Well, now, I have really let out too much (as I feared I should in the end) as to the usual contents of my sea-cradle. But let it stand. And if anybody remarks cynically that I must have been a promising infant in those days, let that stand, too. I am concerned but for the good name of the Tremolino, and I affirm that a ship is ever guiltless of the sins, transgressions, and follies of her men.
XLII.
It was not Tremolino's fault that the syndicate depended so much on the wit and wisdom and the information of Doña Rita. She had taken a little furnished house on the Prado for the good of the cause—Por el Rey! She was always taking little houses for somebody's good, for the sick or the sorry, for broken-down artists, cleanedout gamblers, temporarily unlucky speculators—vieux amis—old friends, as she used to explain apologetically, with a shrug of her fine shoulders.
Whether Don Carlos was one of the "old friends," too, it's hard to say. More unlikely things have been heard of in smoking-rooms. All I know is that one evening, entering incautiously the salon of the little house just after the news of a considerable Carlist success had reached the faithful, I was seized round the neck and waist and whirled recklessly three times round the room, to the crash of upsetting furniture and the humming of a valse tune in a warm contralto voice.
When released from the dizzy embrace, I sat down on the carpet—suddenly, without affectation. In this unpretentious attitude I became aware that J.M.K.B.
