"
Mrs. Gould, with her candid eyes very wide open, her lips composed into
a smile, was steadying herself with a little bejewelled hand against the
side of the door.
"Perhaps you don't know how alarming you are, appearing like this
unexpectedly--"
"I! Alarming!" he protested, sincerely vexed and surprised. "I assure
you that I am not in the least alarmed myself. A fan is lost; well,
it will be found again. But I don't think it is here. It is a fan I am
looking for. I cannot understand how Antonia could--Well! Have you found
it, amigo?"
"No, senor," said behind Mrs. Gould the soft voice of Basilio, the head
servant of the Casa. "I don't think the senorita could have left it in
this house at all."
"Go and look for it in the patio again. Go now, my friend; look for it
on the steps, under the gate; examine every flagstone; search for it
till I come down again. . . . That fellow"--he addressed himself in
English to Mrs. Gould--"is always stealing up behind one's back on his
bare feet. I set him to look for that fan directly I came in to justify
my reappearance, my sudden return.
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