ain a small profit from the affair.

Now ensued a strange underhanded drama. Garcia stayed week after week,
riding often to the city on business or pretence of business, but passing
most of his time at the hacienda, where he wandered about a great deal in
a ghost-like manner, glancing slyly at Clara a hundred times a day without
ever looking her in the eyes, and haunting her steps without overtaking or
addressing her. Every time that she returned from a ride he shambled to
the door to see if the saddle were empty. During the night he hearkened in
the passages for outcries of sudden illness. And while he thus watched the
girl, he was himself incessantly watched by his nephew.

"She gets no worse," the old man at last complained to the younger one. "I
think she is growing fat."

"It is one of the symptoms," replied Coronado. "By the way, there is one
thing which we ought to consider. If she gives you half of this estate--?"

"Madre de Dios! I would take it and go. But she cannot give until she is
of age. And meantime she may marry."

He glanced suspiciously at his nephew, but Coronado kept his bland
composure, merely saying, "No present danger of that. She sees no one but
us."

He thought of adding, "Why not marry her yourself, my dear uncle?" But
Garcia might retort, "And you?" which would be confusing.

"Suppose she should make a will in your favor?" the nephew preferred to
suggest.

"I cannot wait. I must have money now. Make a will? Madre de Dios! She
would outlive me. Besides, he who makes a will can break a will."

After a minute of anxious thought, he asked, "How much do you think she
will give me?"

"I will ask her."

"Not _her_," returned Garcia petulantly. "Are you a pig, an ass, a fool?
Ask the old one--the duenna. It ought to be a great deal; it ought to be
half--and more."

To satisfy the old man as well as himself, Coronado sounded Mrs. Stanley
as to the proposed division.

"Yes, indeed!" said the lady emphatically. "Clara must do something for
Garcia, who has been such an excellent friend, and who ought to have been
named in the will. But you know she has her duties toward herself as well
as toward others. Now the property is not a million; it may be some day or
other, but it isn't now. The executors say it might bring three hundred
thousand dollars in ready money."

The executors, by the way, had been sedulously depreciating the value of
the estate to Clara, in order to bring down her vast