know what we should have done without your hospitality.
What an out-of-the-way place Sulaco is!--and for a harbour, too!
Astonishing!"

"Ah, but we are very proud of it. It used to be historically important.
The highest ecclesiastical court for two viceroyalties, sat here in the
olden time," she instructed him with animation.

"I am impressed. I didn't mean to be disparaging. You seem very
patriotic."

"The place is lovable, if only by its situation. Perhaps you don't know
what an old resident I am."

"How old, I wonder," he murmured, looking at her with a slight smile.
Mrs. Gould's appearance was made youthful by the mobile intelligence of
her face. "We can't give you your ecclesiastical court back again; but
you shall have more steamers, a railway, a telegraph-cable--a future
in the great world which is worth infinitely more than any amount
of ecclesiastical past. You shall be brought in touch with something
greater than two viceroyalties. But I had no notion that a place on
a sea-coast could remain so isolated from the world. If it had been a
thousand miles inland now--most remarkable! Has anything ever happened
here for a hundred years before to-day?"

While he talked in a slow, humorous tone, she kept her little smile.
Agreeing ironically, she assured him that certainly not--nothing ever
happened in Sulaco. Even the revolutions, of which there had been two in
her time, had respected the repose of the place. Their course ran in the
more populous southern parts of the Republic, and the great valley of
Sta. Marta, which was like one great battlefield of the parties, with
the possession of the capital for a prize and an outlet to another
ocean. They were more advanced over there. Here in Sulaco they heard
only the echoes of these great questions, and, of course, their official
world changed each time, coming to them over their rampart of mountains
which he himself had traversed in an old diligencia, with such a risk to
life and limb.

The chairman of the railway had been enjoying her hospitality for
several days, and he was really grateful for it. It was only since he
had left Sta. Marta that he had utterly lost touch with the feeling
of European life on the background of his exotic surroundings. In the
capital he had been the guest of the Legation, and had been kept busy
negotiating with the members of Don Vincente's Government--cultured men,
men to whom the conditions of civilized business were not unknown.