no time had passed by. He
found her just as at parting, with her two nieces seated at her feet,
making interminable, complicated blonde lace upon the cylindrical
pillows supported on their knees.

The only novelty of the captain's stay in this dwelling of monastic
calm was that Don Pedro abstained from his visits. Cinta received her
husband with a pallid smile. In that smile he suspected the work of
time. She had continued thinking of her son every hour, but with a
resignation that was drying her tears and permitting her to continue
the deliberate mechanicalness of existence. Furthermore, she wished to
remove the impression of the angry words, inspired by grief,--the
remembrance of that scene of rebellion in which she had arisen like a
wrathful accuser against the father. And Ferragut for some days
believed that he was living just as in past years when he had not yet
bought the _Mare Nostrum_ and was planning to remain always ashore.
Cinta was attentive to his wishes and obedient as a Christian wife
ought to be. Her words and acts revealed a desire to forget, to make
herself agreeable.

But something was lacking that had made the past so sweet. The
cordiality of youth could not be resuscitated. The remembrance of the
son was always intervening between the two, hardly ever leaving their
thoughts. And so it would always be!

Since that house could no longer be a real home to him, he again began
to await impatiently the hour of sailing. His destiny was to live
henceforth on the ship, to pass the rest of his days upon the waves
like the accursed captain of the Dutch legend, until the pallid virgin
wrapped in black veils--Death--should come to rescue him.

While the steamer finished loading he strolled through the city
visiting his cousins, the manufacturers, or remaining idly in the
cafes. He looked with interest on the human current passing through the
Ramblas in which were mingled the natives of the country and the
picturesque and absurd medley brought in by the war.

The first thing that Ferragut noticed was the visible diminution of
German refugees.

Months before he had met them everywhere, filling the hotels and
monopolizing the cafes,--their green hats and open-neck shirts making
them recognized immediately. The German women in showy and extravagant
gowns, were everywhere kissing each other when meeting, and talking in
shrieks. The German tongue, confounded with the Catalan and the
Castilian, seemed to have b