Sergeant McKay took a short cut down the steep steps, and soon regained the Waterport. There Mrs. Wilders hailed a native boat, and, without condescending to notice the orderly further, she seated herself in the stern-sheets and was rowed off to the Arcadia.

[70]

CHAPTER VIII.

A SOUTHERN PEARL.

"Mariquita! Ma—ri—kee—tah!"

A woman's voice, shrill and quavering, with an accent of anger that increased each time the summons was repeated.

"What's come of the young vixen?" went on the speaker, addressing her husband, the Tio Pedro, who sat with her behind the counter of a small tobacconist's shop—an ugly beldame, shrank and shrivelled, with grey elf-locks, sunk cheeks, and parchment complexion, looking ninety, yet little more than half that age. Women ripen early, are soon at their prime, and fade prematurely, under this quickening Southern sun.

The husband was older, yet better preserved, than his wife—a large, stout man, with a fierce face and black,[71] baleful eyes. All cowered before him except La Zandunga, as they called his wife here in Bombardier Lane. He was at her mercy—a Spaniard resident on the Rock by permit granted to his wife—a native of Gibraltar, and liable to be expelled at any time unless she answered for him.

The shop and stock-in-trade were hers, not his, and she ruled him and the whole place.

"Mariquita!" she called again and again, till at length, overflowing with passion, she rushed from behind the counter into the premises at the back of the shop.

She entered a small but well-lighted room, communicating with a few square feet of garden. At the end was a low fence;