One of these last was extremely amusing in the imitations, she gave us in confidence, of various highly-placed personages she was perpetually rushing off to Paris to interview in the interests of the cause—­Por el Rey!  For she was a Carlist, and of Basque blood at that, with something of a lioness in the expression of her courageous face (especially when she let her hair down), and with the volatile little soul of a sparrow dressed in fine Parisian feathers, which had the trick of coming off disconcertingly at unexpected moments.

But her imitations of a Parisian personage, very highly placed indeed, as she represented him standing in the corner of a room with his face to the wall, rubbing the back of his head and moaning helplessly, “Rita, you are the death of me!” were enough to make one (if young and free from cares) split one’s sides laughing.  She had an uncle still living, a very effective Carlist, too, the priest of a little mountain parish in Guipuzcoa.  As the sea-going member of the syndicate (whose plans depended greatly on Dona Rita’s information), I used to be charged with humbly affectionate messages for the old man.  These messages I was supposed to deliver to the Arragonese muleteers (who were sure to await at certain times the Tremolino in the neighbourhood 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 Dona 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, cleaned-out 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.