when I saw him come out with extended hand.
It was an extraordinary sensation, that of talking to Carlos again. He
seemed to have worn badly. His face had lost its moist bloom, its hardly
distinguishable subcutaneous flush. It had grown very, very pale. Dark
blue circles took away from the blackness and sparkle of his eyes. And
he coughed, and coughed.

He put his arm affectionately round my shoulders and said, "How splendid
to see you again, my Juan." His eyes had affection in them, there was no
doubt about that, but I felt vaguely suspicious of him. I remembered how
we had parted on board the _Thames_. "We can talk here," he added; "it
is very pleasant. You shall see my uncle, that great man, the star of
Cuban law, and my cousin Seraphina, your kinsfolk. They love you; I have
spoken well of you." He smiled gayly, and went on, "This is not a place
befitting his greatness, nor my cousin's, nor, indeed, my own." He
smiled again. "But I shall be very soon dead, and to me it matters
little." He frowned a little, and then laughed. "But you should have
seen the faces of your officers when my uncle refused to go to their
governor's palace; there was to have been a _fiesta_, a 'reception'; is
it not the word? It will cause a great scandal."

He smiled with a good deal of fine malice, and looked as if he expected
me to be pleased. I said that I did not quite understand what had
offended his uncle.

"Oh, it was because there was no priest," Carlos answered, "when those
poor devils were hung. They were _canaille_. Yes; but one gives that
much even to such. And my uncle was there in his official capacity as a
a plenipotentiary. He was very much distressed: we were all. You heard,
my uncle himself had advised their being surrendered to your English.
And when there was no priest he repented very bitterly. Why, after all,
it was an infamy."

He paused again, and leant back against the counter. When his eyes
were upon the ground and his face not animated by talking, there became
lamentably insistent his pallor, the deep shadows under his eyes, and
infinite sadness in the droop of his features, as if he were preoccupied
by an all-pervading and hopeless grief. When he looked at me, he smiled,
however.

"Well, at worst it is over, and my uncle is here in this dirty place
instead of at your palace. We sail back to Cuba this very evening." He
looked round him at Ramon's calicos and sugar tubs in the dim light, as
if he accepted almos