Accordingly, instead of going back to the laboratory, we dropped off near the apartment of the Mendozas and walked over from the subway.

As we turned the corner, far down the long block I could see the entrance to the apartment.

“There she is now,” I said to Kennedy, catching sight of her familiar figure, clad in sombre black, as she came down the steps.  “I wonder where she can be going.”

She turned at the foot of the steps and, as chance would have it, started in the opposite direction from us.

“Let us see,” answered Kennedy, quickening his pace.

She had not gone very far before a man seemed to spring up from nowhere and meet her.  He bowed, and walked along beside her.

“De Moche,” recognized Kennedy.

Alfonso had evidently been waiting in the shadow of an entrance down the street, perhaps hoping to see her, perhaps as our newspaper friend had seen before, to watch whether Lockwood was among her callers.  As we walked along, we could see the little drama with practically no fear of being seen, so earnestly were they talking.

Even during the few minutes that the Senorita was talking with him no one would have needed to be told that she really had a great deal of regard for him, whatever might be her feelings toward Lockwood.

“I should say that she wants to see him, yet does not want to see him,” observed Kennedy, as we came closer.

She seemed now to have become restive and impatient, eager to cut the conversation short.

It was quite evident at the same time that Alfonso was deeply in love with her, that though she tried to put him off he was persistent.  I wondered whether, after all, some of the trouble had not been that during his lifetime the proud old Castilian Don Luis could never have consented to the marriage of his daughter to one of Indian blood.  Had he left a legacy of fear of a love forbidden by race prejudice?

In any event, the manner of Alfonso’s actions about the Mendoza apartment was such that one could easily imagine his feelings toward Lockwood, whom he saw carrying off the prize under his very eyes.

As for his mother, the Senora, we had already seen that Peruvians of her caste were also a proud old race.  Her son was the apple of her eye.  Might not some of her feelings be readily accounted for?  Who were these to scorn her race, her family?

We had walked along at a pace that finally brought us up with them.  As Kennedy and I bowed, Alfonso seemed at first to resent our intrusion, while Inez seemed rather to welcome it as a diversion.

“Can we not expect you?” the young man repeated.  “It will be only for a few minutes this afternoon, and my mother has something of very great importance to tell.”

He was half pleading, half apologizing.  Inez glanced hastily around at Kennedy, uncertain what to say, and hoping that he might indicate some course.  Surreptitiously, Kennedy nodded an affirmative.