They drew back for a moment, then pressed around him like
children.
"Mbe! E bellu, il Inglese," I heard one say to his fellow.
After quelling the brief tumult against me, and while I busied myself
with Nat, the girl had disappeared--I could not tell whither.
But now one of the band ran up the slope calling loudly to summon
her. "O principessa, ajo, ajo! Veni qui, ajo!" and, gazing after
him, I saw her at the entrance of a cave some fifty feet above us,
erect, with either hand parting and holding back the creepers that
curtained her bower.
She let the curtains fall-to behind her, and, stepping down the
hillside, welcomed my father with the gravest of curtsies.
"Salutation, O stranger!"
"And to you, O lady, salutation!" my father made answer, with a bow.
"Though English," he went on, slipping easily into the dialect she
used with her followers, "I am Corsican enough to forbear from asking
their names of gentlefolk in the _macchia_; but mine is John
Constantine, and I am very much at your service."
"My men call me the Princess Camilla."
"A good name," said my father, and seemed to muse upon it for a
moment while he eyed her paternally.
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