Richter's Message

It was a hot evening and Clare sat at a table in the patio, trying to
read. The light was bad, for buzzing insects hovered about the lamp, but
the house had not cooled down yet and she wanted to distract her troubled
thoughts. Footsteps and voices rose from the street outside, where the
citizens were passing on their way to the plaza, but the sounds were
faint and muffled by the high walls. The house had been built in times
when women were jealously guarded and a dwelling was something of a fort.
Now, with the iron gate in the narrow, arched entrance barred, the girl
was securely cut off from the exotic life of the city.

This isolation was sometimes a comfort, but it sometimes jarred. Clare
was young, and fond of cheerful society, and the iron gate had its
counterpart in another barrier, invisible but strong, that shut her out
from much she would have enjoyed. She often stood, so to speak, gazing
wistfully between the bars at innocent pleasures in which she could not
join. Kenwardine, in spite of his polished manners, was tactfully avoided
by English and Americans of the better class, and their wives and
daughters openly showed their disapproval.

At length Clare gave up the attempt to read. She felt lonely and
depressed. Nobody had been to the house since Kenwardine left, and Dick
and Jake were away. She did not see Dick often and he was, of course,
nothing to her; for one thing, he was in some mysterious way her father's
enemy. Still, she missed him; he was honest, and perhaps, if things had
been different---Then she turned her head sharply as she heard the click of a bolt. This
was strange, because Lucille had locked the gate. She could not see it in
the gloom of the arch, but it had certainly opened. Then as she waited
with somewhat excited curiosity a dark figure appeared on the edge of the
light, and she put down her book as Richter came forward. He made very
little noise and stopped near the table.