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cute!’
    ‘Cute’ was hardly the word to describe Teresa in that moment. She was completely transformed. A band of minstrels dressed in the garb of Philip II was serenading the diners for money instead of the traditional love, but they were immensely talented young men and truly colourful in their velvet knee-breeches and tunics with the large, slashed sleeves of the period and their capes festooned with satin favours in all the colours of the spectrum. One, in a voice which echoed to the rafters, was singing a love- song.
    ‘They are university students,’ Teresa whispered. ‘They form groups to play and sing in the restaurants. Isn’t it romantic!’
    ‘O, my beloved,’ sang the vocalist, while the guitars and a single violin played the accompaniment. Then, when the applause had subsided, the guitars came into their own. Sobbing out in the sudden hush which had fallen on the noisy room, the music started on a plaintive note, a few soft chords gently plucked from the delicate strings, but soon it was rising on a wave of anguish, a lover pleading in the night for trust and understanding.
    Catherine sat rigidly in her seat, the music vibrating on every sensitive nerve as she listened, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, until she became aware of the man standing in the doorway at the head of the stairs.
    Don Jaime had come in search of them, his face dark with anger as their eyes met.
    ‘It’s Jaime!’ Teresa exclaimed in a half-whisper. ‘He must have returned early from Toledo.’
    Don Jaime made his way purposefully between the tables, drawing the eyes of most of the American women as he passed and striding between the minstrels as if he would sweep them from his path, and none of the anger had left his face when he finally confronted them.
    ‘How did you know where to find us?’ Teresa asked. ‘We have just come in.’
    Ignoring both question and observation, he sat down in the vacant chair opposite his niece.
    ‘I presume you have already ordered your meal,’ he said in a tight voice, ‘and you may wait for it, but I intend to take you straight home after your first course.’
    ‘Oh, Jaime!’ Teresa wailed. ‘You spoil everything! Catherine wanted to see the night life and it was so dull at the Vegas’. You say yourself that they are only half alive!’
    ‘That may be so,’ he agreed, ‘but you were supposed to be there and you were not. When I arrived to take you home you had gone.’ He was holding his temper in check with an effort. ‘If Miss Royce was so keen to sample our night life you should have mentioned the fact when I took you to lunch and it could have been arranged for some other time.’
    ‘But there is so little time!’ Teresa pouted. ‘Botin’s is most respectable and Catherine should get some “atmosphere” instead of always dining in a top-class restaurant.’
    Don Jaime turned to Catherine for the first time. He was evidently not going to make a scene in a public place. He was too well bred for that.
    ‘I’m sorry you found our rendezvous on the Castellana so dull,’ he remarked, ‘but no doubt this evening will make amends.’ He glanced beyond her at the minstrels in their velvet doublets while their impassioned music rang like a knell in Catherine’s ears. ‘Botin’s has always been a colourful tourist trap, but the food is excellent, I believe.’
    Catherine, who had been enjoying the atmosphere in the picturesque seventeenth-century building as well as the talented performance of the students, was suddenly angry.
    ‘I thanked you for a very pleasant lunch,’ she reminded him, ‘and I really meant what I said, but this is different. I didn’t see any reason why Teresa and I shouldn’t have come here for a meal, but if I was wrong I’m sorry. It seems a shame not to take advantage of so much innocent pleasure, but no doubt I should have been more—discreet.’
    ‘It is Teresa who should have known better,’ he said briefly. ‘The point is that she