Bandit Love by Juanita Savage (brene brown rising strong txt) 📖

showing signs of chagrin. "I am in deadly earnest. I love you and want you, and the Devil himself will not prevent me from making you my own."

"His Satanic Majesty need not concern himself with the affair at all, at all," retorted Myra, regarding him coldly. "Let me save him the trouble by assuring you that your eloquent and melodramatic protestations of love leave me cold, and your boast that no woman has ever been able to resist you inspired me only with contempt for your conceit. Let me remind you again, also, that I am engaged to be married to Mr. Antony Standish, and assure you I have not the slightest intention of transferring my affections from an English gentleman to a Spaniard who evidently prides himself on being a sort of modern Don Juan."

Don Carlos's face went white beneath the tan as he listened to the scathing words, and a gleam of anger flashed into his dark eyes.

"You do me an injustice, and I think you are doing your own heart an injustice, Myra," he said, in a curiously quiet voice, after a momentary pause. "If——"

"I object to your calling me by my Christian name," Myra interposed abruptly, intent on snubbing him. "May I remind you we met for the first time yesterday. I can hardly imagine that in your own country you would dare to call a girl 'Myra' a few hours after meeting her for the first time."

"My dear Miss Rostrevor, I can lay my hand on my heart and assure you on my word of honour that never in Spain have I ever called a girl 'Myra,' either within a few hours or a few years of our first meeting," said Don Carlos, his eyes beginning to twinkle again. "That may be explained by the fact that I have never heard the name before. But I think it is a charming name, which somehow fits you. Incidentally, señorita, may I venture to point out that you have been addressing me as 'Don Carlos,' instead of as 'Señor de Ruiz'? You have been calling me by my Christian name."

"That was only because I thought 'Don' was a sort of Spanish equivalent of 'Sir' in English," Myra responded, somewhat taken aback. "Here I should address a Knight or a Baronet as 'Sir Charles' without the slightest idea of being familiar, but I should not expect him to respond by addressing me as 'Myra.' Do I make myself plain?"

"Dear lady, you could never make yourself plain, you who are so beautiful, but you are explicit," answered Don Carlos with a radiant smile that made him look quite boyish. "I stand rebuked, Myra, but I am impenitent. Surely one is not committing a crime by calling the girl one loves by her Christian name? I would prefer to call you cara mia or querida, which are the Spanish equivalents for my beloved and sweetheart, but, of course, as you seem to think I——"

"Señor de Ruiz, I have had enough of this nonsense!" Myra interrupted, impatiently. "Your attempts at love-making are utterly distasteful, and if you imagine you are going to add me to your list of conquests you are a case for a mental specialist."

"Alas!" exclaimed Don Carlos, and again sighed heavily. "You seem to think I am a sort of mountebank who makes a hobby of paying court to women. You misjudge me, Myra. True, I have made love to women before, true, many have fallen in love with me and thrown themselves at my head—as you say in English. True——"

"You are boasting again," interposed Myra once more. "I have no desire or inclination to listen to an account of your amorous conquests."

"But you must listen, Myra," said Don Carlos earnestly. "You misjudge me. True, there have been many women in my life, but not one who inspired love, not one to whom I offered my heart, not one whom I had any wish to marry. Long ago it was foretold by a gipsy gifted with second sight that I should meet my fate in my thirty-fifth year in a foreign land, meet my ideal, the woman of my dreams. That prophecy has come true. The moment our eyes first met yesterday I knew you were the woman for whom I had been seeking and waiting. It is useless to fight against destiny, Myra. I shall win you by hook or by crook, and make you all mine."

"That sounds like a challenge, Don Carlos," retorted Myra with forced lightness. "As you believe in gipsy forecasts, however, let me tell you that a gipsy woman 'read my hand' a few years ago, warned me to beware of a tall, dark man, and foretold that I should marry a tall, fair man. If she was right, you are obviously the tall, dark man of whom I am to beware, just as Tony Standish is the man I am destined to marry."

"Pouf! I pay no heed to the foolish prattle of so-called gipsy fortune-tellers," said Don Carlos, smiling again. "The seer who foretold that I should meet and win you was King of the Spanish Gypsies, and his every prophecy comes true."

"Well, to make his prophecy come true as far as you are concerned, Don Carlos, you will have to fall in love with someone other than me," responded Myra. "Hadn't you better have some tea, señor?"

CHAPTER III

To Myra's relief, Lady Fermanagh returned just then, full of apologies for having been detained so long at the telephone.

"I hope Myra has been keeping you entertained, señor," she inquired, and Don Carlos nodded smilingly.

"More than entertained, Lady Fermanagh," he answered. "Miss Rostrevor and I have been discussing predestination. I have been telling her it was foretold by the King of the Gypsies that in this, my thirty-fifth year, I should meet my ideal, the woman predestined to be my wife. I have met her. The prophecy has come true."

"I'm afraid it is another case of mistaken identity, Aunt Clarissa," interposed Myra. "Señor de Ruiz has made the amazing and amusing suggestion that I am the woman! Did you ever hear anything more absurd?"

She thought to cover Don Carlos with confusion, but he did not turn a hair.

"Alas, Lady Fermanagh, your charming niece refuses to take me seriously!" he smilingly lamented. "It seems she was warned as a child to beware of a tall, dark, handsome man, and to put no faith in his honeyed words. I am desolated—but only temporarily!"

"From what I can make of it, you appear to have been engaged in a 'leg-pulling' contest," commented Lady Fermanagh, darting a quick glance from one to the other, and deciding that Myra was probably evolving some mischievous joke. "You don't mean to tell me seriously, Don Carlos, that you have any faith in the predictions of a gipsy?"

"Dear lady, since the King of the Gypsies predicted I should get my heart's desire, surely it would be almost heresy to doubt?" Don Carlos replied, with a side-glance at Myra. "In my own country I have the reputation always of gaining anything on which I set my heart, and here I intend to live up to my reputation. Assuredly the Gypsy King's prediction will come true, your ladyship."

He took his leave a few minutes later, pleasing Lady Fermanagh greatly by bowing low over her hand and raising her fingers to his lips.

"One of the most charming men I have met for years," the old lady remarked, when the door closed behind him. "He is a true Spanish grandee, with all the grace of a born courtier. I think it was exceedingly rude of you, Myra, to snatch your hand away as you did when Don Carlos was going to kiss your fingertips."

"Personally, Aunt, I think he is the most arrogant, ill-mannered and insufferably conceited man I have ever met," Myra responded warmly. "He openly boasts that no woman can resist him, prides himself on his conquests, and while you were out of the room he was making passionate love to me, and only made fun of my attempts to snub him. I hope you won't invite the horrible creature here again."

Lady Fermanagh regarded her in amazement for a few moments, then dissolved into laughter.

"Oh, you modern girls!" she exclaimed. "You think you know such a lot and are so advanced, yet you are as easily scared or fooled as any country maiden in Victorian times."

"My dear aunt, Don Carlos de Ruiz can neither scare nor fool me," protested Myra; "but surely I have a right to object to his attempting to make love to me when he knows I am engaged to Tony Standish."

"Remember he is a Spaniard, my dear," said her aunt, with a tolerant smile. "The greatest compliment a Latin can pay a woman is to make love to her—and the majority make love merely by way of being complimentary. Don Carlos de Ruiz probably makes love to every woman he meets, which very likely explains why he is so popular. Why, my dear, he almost made love to me!"

"But he didn't tell you he wanted to marry you, did he, Aunt Clarissa, swear he would win you by hook or by crook, and vow that Old Nick himself would not prevent him from making you his own?" inquired Myra, beginning to smile again.

Lady Fermanagh laughed heartily.

"No, my dear, he certainly did not go as far as that," she answered. "You don't mean to tell me he actually said something to that effect to you?"

"Yes, both last night at the dance, and again a few minutes ago—and he said it as if he meant it. I have half a mind to ask Tony to tell the arrogantly conceited Spaniard not to pester me with his attentions again."

"My dear child, don't make yourself ridiculous by doing anything so foolish. You need not take Don Carlos too seriously. He is very much a man of the world, probably something of a Don Juan, and likely makes love as a pastime. I met many of his type when your Uncle was in the Diplomatic Service—wealthy bachelors who made love to almost every pretty woman they met, provided always, however, that the woman was married or engaged, and there was no danger of being caught in the matrimonial net. I should say, my dear, judging from my experience, that Don Carlos probably would only have paid you compliments instead of making love to you, if he had not known you were engaged."

"That sort of philanderer deserves to be kicked or horsewhipped, Aunt
Clarissa, for making a mockery of love."

"Oh, I don't know about that, my dear Myra. After all, as I have told you, men of the Latin races make love almost indiscriminately by way of paying a compliment, and pretty women in Spain, Italy, or France, would feel quite insulted if the men to whom they were introduced did not profess to be hopelessly in love with them. If you had lived abroad, Myra, you would feel flattered rather than annoyed."

"Maybe—and maybe not," said Myra, with a toss of her red-gold head. "If you are right, then Don Carlos is merely trying to amuse himself at my expense. I have no use for a professional philanderer who imagines that no woman can resist him. Him and his King of the Gypsies prophecy! Pouf!"

Yet as she dressed for dinner a little later she found herself recalling the passionate words of Don Carlos, remembering the ardent light in his dark eyes, the vibrant note in his deep, musical voice, found herself wondering, wondering, and wishing with all her heart that Tony Standish was a little more like Don Carlos de Ruiz.

"I'm not scared of him, and I am certainly not going to lose my heart to him," Myra whispered to her reflection in the mirror. "If Aunt Clarissa is right, he is only making love to me for his own amusement, and would sheer off if I took him seriously and expected him to marry me. A pretty fool I should look if I fell in love with him, broke off my engagement to Tony, and then Don Carlos levanted! But I'm not going to fall in love with him…. He certainly is