. . But this comes later.
Bisesa was an endless delight to Trejago. She was as ignorant as a bird; and
her distorted versions of the rumors from the outside world that had reached
her in her room, amused Trejago almost as much as her lisping attempts to
pronounce his name--"Christopher." The first syllable was always more than she
could manage, and she made funny little gestures with her rose-leaf hands, as
one throwing the name away, and then, kneeling before Trejago, asked him,
exactly as an Englishwoman would do, if he were sure he loved her. Trejago
swore that he loved her more than any one else in the world. Which was true.
After a month of this folly, the exigencies of his other life compelled
Trejago to be especially attentive to a lady of his acquaintance. You may take
it for a fact that anything of this kind is not only noticed and discussed by
a man's own race, but by some hundred and fifty natives as well. Trejago had
to walk with this lady and talk to her at the Band-stand, and once or twice to
drive with her; never for an instant dreaming that this would affect his
dearer out-of-the-way life. But the news flew, in the usual mysterious
fashion, from mouth to mouth, till Bisesa's duenna heard of it and told
Bisesa.
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