“I am afraid you always get your way in everything,” Jimmy complained.

“Not really,” Skye replied. “I have had to wait until I was twenty-one, for instance, to come to Mariposa. I suggested coming years ago, but my aunt was simply horrified at the idea. She thinks everyone who lives in South America, or in the North for that matter, is a savage.”

“Hilda is a sensible woman,” Jimmy said, “I am extremely fond of her.”

“So am I,” Skye agreed, “but you must admit that she has very little imagination. So different from my American grandmother. You would have loved her!”

“I wonder. I am very English you know in some ways, one being that I disapprove of young ladies who, with too much money and not enough sense, go careering about the world by themselves.”

“There speaks all my English relations, ancestors and forbears,” Skye laughed. “When you talk like that, Jimmy, I find myself being extremely glad that I am half American.”

“All the same you will be sorry one day that you have not listened to me.”

It was not surprising that he was worried, he told himself as he watched her. She was, in her pink, white and gold beauty, enough to turn any man’s head and he had seen the bold glances her slim sweetly curved figure just blossoming into maturity received from the dark-eyed Mariposans with Spanish blood coursing hotly in their veins.

The horses were moving forward down the incline of the hill. As they went, Jimmy looked back and saw over his shoulder that their escorts, two Mariposan boys who had been sent with them as guides, were talking together and pointing to the distance.

Then, as he turned away, he heard one of them come cantering up behind.

“What is it?” he enquired in Spanish.

“Excusa, señor,” the boy said in his soft deep voice, “but it is best that you and the señorita should go no further.”

“Why?” Jimmy started to ask, only to be interrupted by Skye.

“We are going on,” she said in fluent and beautifully enunciated Spanish. “It is still early in the afternoon and the señor and I wish to see the country.”

“But, señorita – ” the boy started to say.

“That is what I command,” Skye said imperiously and, spurring her horse, she galloped off ahead.

It was a little time before Jimmy could catch her and when he did they cantered for some way over the soft springing turf before their horses settled down to walk more quietly beneath the shade of some trees.

“Why did he want us to turn back?” Jimmy asked when he could get his breath.

Skye shrugged her shoulders.