too far in his
recriminations. But the sincere grief of the old man touched him deeply.
Don Andres, who resembled Rafael's father as the cat resembles the
tiger, could think of nothing but Brull politics; and he was almost
sobbing as he saw the danger which the prestige of the Brull House was
running.

With bowed head, crushed by the realization of the scene that had
followed his flight, Rafael did not notice where they were going. But
soon he became conscious of the perfume of flowers. They were crossing a
garden; and as he looked up he saw the figure of Valencia's conqueror on
his sinewy charger glistening in the sun.

They walked on. The old man began in wailing accents to describe the
situation which the Brull House was facing. That money, which perhaps
Rafael still had in his pocket--more than thirty thousand
_pesetas_--represented the final desperate efforts of his mother to
rescue the family fortune, which had been endangered by don Ramon's
prodigal habits. The money was his, and don Andres had nothing to say in
that regard. Rafael was at liberty to squander it, scatter it to the
four winds of heaven; but don Andres wasn't talking to a child, he was
talking to a man with a heart: so he begged him, as his childhood
preceptor, as his oldest friend, to consider the sacrifices his mother
had been making--the privations she had imposed upon herself, going
without new clothes, quarreling with her help over a _centimo_, despite
all her airs as a grand lady, depriving herself of all the dainties and
comforts that are so pleasant to old age--all that her son, her _senor
hijo_, might waste it in gay living on a woman! Thirty thousand! And
don Andres mentioned the sum with bated breath! It had taken so much
trouble to hoard it! Come, man! The sight of such things was enough to
make a fellow cry like a baby!...

And suppose his father, don Ramon, were to rise from the grave? Suppose
he could see how his Rafael were destroying at a single stroke what it
had cost him so many years to build up, just because of a woman!...

They were now crossing a bridge. Below, against the background of white
gravel in the river-bed the red and blue uniforms of a group of soldiers
could be seen; and the drums were beating, sounding in the distance like
the humming of a huge bee-hive--worthy accompaniment, Rafael reflected,
to the old man's evocation of the youth's father. Rafael thought he
could almost see in front of him the massive body