I was continually being summoned to her presence; she kept me talking for hours at a time, and never went out for a ride or a walk without making me bear her company.

Her attentions became so marked, in fact, that I began to have an awful fear that she had fallen in love with me.

As to this she did not leave me long in doubt.
One day when I had been entertaining her with an account of my travels, she startled me by inquiring, _a propos_ to nothing in particular, if I knew why she had not married.
"Because you are a daughter of the Incas, and there is no man in Pachatupec of equal rank with yourself." "Once there was not, but now there is." I breathed again; she surely could not mean me.
"There is now--there has been some time," she continued, after a short pause.

"Know you who he is ?" I said that I had not the slightest idea.
"Yourself, senor; you are the man." "Impossible, Mamcuna! I am of very inferior rank, indeed--a common soldier, a mere nobody." "You are too modest, senor; you do yourself an injustice.

A man with so white a skin, a beard so long, and eyes so beautiful must be of royal lineage, and fit to mate even with the daughter of the Incas." "You are quite mistaken, Mamcuna; I am utterly unworthy of so great an honor." "You are not, I tell you.