Accordingly each Jehu, leaving his horse in charge of an attendant, stepped up to some young lady who evidently was waiting for him, and led her by the hand to his sledge.

While Lysbeth was watching this ceremony with amusement--for these selections were always understood to show a strong preference on behalf of the chooser for the chosen--she was astonished to hear a well-trained voice addressing her, and on looking up to see Don Juan de Montalvo bowing almost to the ice.
"Senora," he said in Castilian, a tongue which Lysbeth understood well enough, although she only spoke it when obliged, "unless my ears deceived me, I heard you admiring my horse and sledge.

Now, with the permission of your cavalier," and he bowed courteously to Dirk, "I name you as my passenger for the great race, knowing that you will bring me fortune.

Have I your leave, Senor ?" Now if there was a people on earth whom Dirk van Goorl hated, the Spaniards were that people, and if there lived a cavalier who he would prefer should not take his cousin Lysbeth for a lonely drive, that cavalier was the Count Juan de Montalvo.

But as a young man, Dirk was singularly diffident and so easily confused that on the spur of the moment it was quite possible for a person of address to make him say what he did not mean.