occurred to him distinctly that something underhand was
going on. As he went out he ignored the doctor pointedly.

"A brute!" said Sotillo, as the door shut.

Dr. Monygham slipped off the window-sill, and, thrusting his hands into
the pockets of the long, grey dust coat he was wearing, made a few steps
into the room.

Sotillo got up, too, and, putting himself in the way, examined him from
head to foot.

"So your countrymen do not confide in you very much, senor doctor. They
do not love you, eh? Why is that, I wonder?"

The doctor, lifting his head, answered by a long, lifeless stare and the
words, "Perhaps because I have lived too long in Costaguana."

Sotillo had a gleam of white teeth under the black moustache.

"Aha! But you love yourself," he said, encouragingly.

"If you leave them alone," the doctor said, looking with the same
lifeless stare at Sotillo's handsome face, "they will betray themselves
very soon. Meantime, I may try to make Don Carlos speak?"

"Ah! senor doctor," said Sotillo, wagging his head, "you are a man of
quick intelligence. We were made to understand each other." He turned
away. He could bear no longer that expressionless and motionless stare,
which seemed to have a sort of impenetrable emptiness like the black
depth of an abyss.

Even in a man utterly devoid of moral sense there remains an
appreciation of rascality which, being conventional, is perfectly clear.
Sotillo thought that Dr. Monygham, so different from all Europeans, was
ready to sell his countrymen and Charles Gould, his employer, for some
share of the San Tome silver. Sotillo did not despise him for that. The
colonel's want of moral sense was of a profound and innocent character.
It bordered upon stupidity, moral stupidity. Nothing that served his
ends could appear to him really reprehensible. Nevertheless, he despised
Dr. Monygham. He had for him an immense and satisfactory contempt.
He despised him with all his heart because he did not mean to let the
doctor have any reward at all. He despised him, not as a man without
faith and honour, but as a fool. Dr. Monygham's insight into his
character had deceived Sotillo completely. Therefore he thought the
doctor a fool.

Since his arrival in Sulaco the colonel's ideas had undergone some
modification.

He no longer wished for a political career in Montero's administration.
He had always doubted the safety of that course. Since he had learned
from the chief engineer that