Blanco was standing apart, looking on, when he felt a light touch on his shoulder and turned to find a young officer at his back who smilingly begged him for a moment in the gardens.  The Spaniard noticed that the man who addressed him wore the epaulettes of a Captain of Infantry and the added stripe and crown of gold lace at the cuff which designated service in the household of the reigning family.

He turned and accompanied the officer through the wide door into the lantern-hung grounds, passing between the groups which clustered everywhere about small wicker tea-tables.  There were no quiet or secluded spots in the gardens of the Strangers’ Club to-night, but after a brief glance right and left the Captain led the way to a table in a shadowed niche between two doors.  The light there was more shadowed and the tides of promenaders did not crowd so close upon it as elsewhere.  As the two came up a third man rose from this table and Manuel found himself looking into the flinty eyes of Colonel Von Ritz.

Von Ritz spoke briefly.  If Senor Blanco could spare the time, His Majesty wished to speak with him.

The younger officer turned back into the casino and Von Ritz led the toreador through the front gardens, where the tennis courts lay bare between the palms.  The acacias and sycamores were soft, dark spots against the far-flung procession of the stars.

The street outside was crowded with fiacres and cabs.  Von Ritz signaled to a footman and in a moment more Blanco and his escort had stepped into a closed carriage and were being driven toward the Palace.  They entered by a side passage and the Colonel conducted him through several halls and chambers filled with uniformed officers, and finally into a more remote part of the building where they met only an occasional servant.  At last they came into a great room entirely empty but for themselves.  About the walls hung ripened portraits.  The decorations were of Arabesque mosaics with fantastic panels of Moorish tiling.  It might have been a grandee’s house in Seville, patterned on the Alcazar.  Evidently this was part of a private suite.  Heavy portieres were only partly drawn across a wide window with the sill at the floor level, and through them Blanco dimly saw a balcony giving out over a small garden, and commanding more distantly the harbor and town lights below.  From somewhere in the garden came the splashing of a small fountain.

Here Von Ritz left his charge to himself, silently departing with a bow.  For a while the Spaniard remained alone.  The room was not so brightly illuminated as many through which he had come on his way across the Palace.  Light filtered through swinging lamps of wrought metal encrusted with prisms of green and amber and garnet.  The Moorish scheme depends in part upon its shadows.  Finally a gentleman entered from a balcony.  He was neither in uniform nor in evening dress.  His face was smooth-shaven and pleasing.