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Updated: May 12, 2025
"Yes," said my cousin, with a sigh, "I never regretted it till last week. It will never be the same again." Mrs. Hovey looked at him with supreme disdain. "I suppose you mean Senora Ramal," said she scornfully. Her husband, feigning the utmost woe, nodded mournfully; whereupon she began humming the air of the Chanson du Colonel, and was stopped by a smothering kiss. "And who is the Senora Ramal?"
That same evening, when I registered at the Antlers Hotel, a few minutes before the dinner hour, I turned over two pages of the book, and there before me was the entry, "Senor and Senora Ramal, Paris." It was in Harry's handwriting. After dinner a most excellent dinner, with melons from La Junta and trout from the mountain streams I descended on the hotel clerk with questions.
I asked. "The most beautiful woman in the world," said Mrs. Hovey. This from a woman who was herself beautiful! Amazing! I suppose my face betrayed my thought. "It isn't charity," she smiled. "Like John Holden, I have seen fire-balloons by the hundred, I have seen the moon, and then I saw no more fire-balloons." "But who is she?" Hovey explained. "She is the wife of Senor Ramal.
But I thought it needless to ask for a description of Harry; for I had no doubt of the identity of Senor Ramal and his wife. I pondered over the name, and suddenly realized that it was merely "Lamar" spelled backward! The discovery removed the last remaining shadow of doubt.
I thanked my cousin for a pleasant evening though he did not know the extent of my debt to him and declined his urgent invitation to have my luggage brought to his home. On my way to the hotel I was struck by a sudden thought: Senor Ramal could not be my brother or my cousin would have recognized him!
I had been pleased at the Bullen find, but here was something quite different. When I laid down Mr. De La Mare's MS. signed Walter Ramal, an anagram of De La Mare I am proud to say that I fully realised that a new planet had swum into my ken. I had had the good luck to be the literary astronomer first to notice that the Host of Heaven had another recruit.
She paused and seemed to be searching for words; then she said abruptly: "M. Lamar, I wish you to do me a favor." "Anything, Le Mire, in or out of reason." Again she hesitated; then: "Do not call me Le Mire." I laughed. "But certainly, Senora Ramal. And what is the favor?" "That." "That " "Do not call me Le Mire nor Senora Ramal." "Well, but I must address you occasionally." "Call me Desiree."
He was most obliging a sharp, pleasant fellow, with prominent ears and a Rocky Mountain twang. "Senor and Senora Ramal? Most assuredly, sir. They have been here several days. No, they are not now in the hotel. They left this afternoon for Manitou, to take dinner there, and are going to make the night trip up the Peak." An idea immediately suggested itself to me.
His companion had not moved, except to turn her head; but after the first swift shadow of surprise her face brightened with a smile of welcome, for all the world as though this were a morning call in her boudoir. "Senor and Senora Ramal, I believe?" said I with a smile, crossing to them with an exaggerated bow.
Connoisseurs of style will recognise what I mean when I say that what endeared "Walter Ramal" to me was that, in spite of the fact that Stevenson at that very time was at his best, and so was Kipling, there was not a trace of either author's influence in Mr. De La Mare's prose. The very occasional appearances of Stevensonianism were in truth only examples of common origin.
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