“Pauline was upset, but she still had not the courage to tell the truth. ‘Don’t worry, my dear,’ Sir Rupert comforted her, ‘the young fool knows which side his bread is buttered. He’ll come back with his tail between his legs.’

“But Guy didn’t come home. The one thousand pounds arrived on Monday. A few weeks later they found that he had sold out all his shares, had closed his bank account, disposed of his car, given up the rooms he had in London and disappeared.

“It was when Sir Rupert began to worry that Pauline broke down and told the truth. He was too upset by this time even to be angry with her. Instead he began to make enquiries as to where Guy had gone. They thought at first that he might be staying with friends abroad. They wrote in various directions and then, when they heard that I was going to the Argentine, they asked me to make enquiries out here.”

“And did you?” Skye asked.

“I did what I could,” Jimmy replied, “but it was not very much. A Continent is a big place to look for one young man. I sent a routine message through to the Embassies. I enquired of friends in Patagonia and Peru if they had heard of Guy Tremayne. I asked a businessman who occasionally visited Mariposa to keep his eyes open for the boy. There was not much else I could do.”

“Anyway, they could not know that he had changed his name,” Skye said.

“I never thought of his doing such a thing,” Jimmy admitted, “and actually he has only translated his own into Spanish. I think Sir Rupert would have been glad of that.”

He was silent as Evans came on deck and stopped beside Skye’s chair.

“The gentleman is awake, miss. He has asked for food. I have given him all the doctor said he was to have, but he still wants more.”

Skye smiled, her eyes suddenly alight.

“Give him all he wants, Evans. He always gets his own way.”

“Very good, miss,” Evans replied with a slightly reproving air.

Skye walked across the deck. As she waited for El Diablo to finish his meal, she was thinking of Pauline. Jimmy’s story told her more than he realised and she understood now many things about El Diablo that had puzzled her before. His hatred of Society, Pauline was responsible for that.

The way he despised women and scorned the idea they could have any sense of honour or integrity. Pauline was responsible for that, too. But he had loved her!

Perhaps he would never love another woman.

Skye remembered the times that El Diablo had made it very clear that the passion he felt for her had no connection with love.

“Can’t you leave me alone?” she had flared at him once when he had pulled her into his arms when dinner was over.