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Presidente’s problem. What would be my problem, Miss Bradley, is if he induces anyone from our country to partner him in the flouting of Charaguay's or our conventions.'
    I flushed and lifted my chin. ‘And you think I would be easily induced?'
    ‘I haven’t known you long enough to form an opinion,' James Fitzgerald replied crushingly, ‘but for your sake I hope not. I am simply warning you,’ he stood up to indicate that my time with him was now over, ‘that to try to pursue your friendship with Don Ramón would be unwise, and that you in the end would be the sufferer.' He opened the door and stood facing me. ‘Don Ramon has the kind of persuasive tongue that can turn black into white and ugly into beautiful. Young women, I am told, are peculiarly susceptible to that sort of flattery.’
    He stared intently down into my face.
    As the gate of Chancery clashed shut between us, I thought he could not have made his opinion of me more devastatingly plain.
     

CHAPTER V
    I escaped with relief into the noonday sun. I tried to forget Mr. Fitzgerald’s obvious dislike of me. I tried to forget Don Ramón—his romantic presence and his romantic history. I was early for my lunch-time meeting with Hester, so I walked slowly across the square. Indians had already set out their wares along the pavement —brilliantly coloured woollen ponchos, leather goods, pottery and the gold-coated glass beads covered the flagstones and hung over the railings. The woollen ponchos had a design woven into them. It was of a little Indian girl, and kneeling at her feet, a tall man with a silver helmet that must have been her Conquistador.
    I crossed to the statue and its circlet of fountains in the centre of the square. Some unknown sculptor had made a little masterpiece of the barefoot princess’s radiant face, and had lovingly carved every piece of the armour and accoutrements of her Spanish husband. True or false, Don Ramón's romantic history seemed to survive everywhere.
    Even in the lush gardens of the white-painted villas I passed on the way to the park, there I spied the two of them, peeping out of thickets of purple hibiscus, or under a cloud of jasmine—the fifteenth-century Don Ramón and his little bride—like the British put up their garden gnomes or stone rabbits and speckled toadstools. In one garden Don Ramón was offering his princess a basket of potted white orchids. In another the two of them stood, hands stretched towards one another, on either side of an ornamental gate.
    When I reached the cafe in the park, there was a small ornamental pond set in the centre of the tables on the terrace. An electric fountain played, and there was the stone Don Ramón and his bride everlastingly smiling fondly, everlastingly drenched underneath its cascade.
    The cafe was half empty. Charaguayans, I knew, lunch late. I sat myself down at a painted wooden table facing the fountain and waited.
    I wasn’t hungry. After my session with Mr. Fitzgerald I enjoyed the peace and the sunlight. I listened to the intermittent sound of bells, the muted traffic, and the cries of children playing among the scented trees. People eyed me with some curiosity, lingered even for a second by my table, but no one spoke. The Charaguayans are an inquisitive race, a romantic race, but as Mr. Fitzgerald had said, highly circumspect.
    At one o’clock a carillon of bells sounded from all the clocks and spires in the city. At one-fifteen I began to get a little anxious about Hester. The other tables were filling up. Politely but more firmly the waiter hovered close behind my chair. At one-thirty, I heard the waiter say softly to someone in Spanish, ‘The English senorita is here by the fountain.’
    There was a brisk footfall behind me. A shadow fell across the table—a taller shadow than Hester’s. I removed my gaze from the little stone figure beneath the fountain, and saw with dismay that the real Don Ramon had come.
     
    Both of us looked astonished, Don