a bad night. Nor could his political friends guess, that
afternoon, why in such fine weather, Rafael should come and shut himself
up in the stifling atmosphere of the Club.

When he came in, a crowd of noisy henchmen gathered round him to discuss
all over again the great news that had been keeping "the Party" in
feverish excitement for a week past: the Cortes were to be dissolved!
The newspapers had been talking of nothing else. Within two or three
months, before the close of the year at the latest, there would be a new
election, and therewith, as all averred, a landslide for don Rafael
Brull. The intimate friend and lieutenant of the House of Brull was the
best informed. If the elections took place on the date indicated by the
newspapers, Rafael would still be five or six months short of his
twenty-fifth birth-day. But don Andres had written to Madrid to consult
the Party leaders. The prime minister was agreeable--"there were
precedents!"--and even though Rafael should be a few weeks short of the
legal age, the seat would go to him just the same. They would send no
more "foundlings" from Madrid! Alcira would have no more "unknowns"
foisted upon her! And the whole Tribe of Brull dependents was preparing
for the contest with the enthusiasm of a prize-fighter sure of victory
beforehand.

All this bustling expectation left Rafael cold. For years he had been
looking forward to that election time, when the chance would come for
his free life in Madrid. Now that it was at hand he was completely
indifferent to the whole matter, as if he were the last person in the
world concerned.

He looked impatiently at the table where don Andres, with three other
leading citizens, was having his daily hand at cards before coming to
sit down at Rafael's side. That was a canny habit of don Andres. He
liked to be seen in his capacity of Regent, sheltering the heir-apparent
under the wing of his prestige and experienced wisdom.

Well along in the afternoon, when the Club parlor was less crowded with
members, the atmosphere freer of smoke, and the ivory balls less noisy
on the green cloth, don Andres considered his game at an end, and took a
chair in his disciple's circle, where as usual Rafael was sitting with
the most parasitic and adulatory of his partisans.

The boy pretended to be listening to their conversation, but all the
while he was preparing mentally a question he had decided to put to don
Andres the day before.

At last he ma