t incredulously the fact that they could be in
such a place, and the manner of his voice indicated that he thought
our governor's palace would have been hardly less barbarous. "But I
am sorry," he said suddenly, "because I wanted you--you and all your
countrymen--to make a good impression on him. You must do it yourself
alone. And you will. You are not like these others. You are our kinsman,
and I have praised you very much. You saved my life."

I began to say that I had done nothing at all, but he waved his hand
with a little smile.

"You are very brave," he said, as if to silence me. "I am not
ungrateful."

He began again to ask for news from home--from my home. I told him that
Veronica had a baby, and he sighed.

"She married the excellent Rooksby?" he asked. "Ah, what a waste." He
relapsed into silence again. "There was no woman in your land like her.
She might have------- And to marry that--that excellent personage, my
good cousin. It is a tragedy."

"It was a very good match," I answered.

He sighed again. "My uncle is asleep in there, now," he said, after a
pause, pointing at the inner door. "We must not wake him; he is a very
old man. You do not mind talking to me? You will wait to see them? Dona
Seraphina is here, too."

"You have not married your cousin?" I asked.

I wanted very much to see the young girl who had looked at me for a
moment, and I certainly should have been distressed if Carlos had said
she was married.

He answered, "What would you have?" and shrugged his shoulders gently. A
smile came into his face. "She is very willful. I did not please her, I
do not know why. Perhaps she has seen too many men like me."

He told me that, when he reached Cuba, after parting with me on the
_Thames_, his uncle, "in spite of certain influences," had received
him quite naturally as his heir, and the future head of the family. But
Seraphina, whom by the laws of convenience he ought to have married, had
quite calmly refused him.

"I did not impress her; she is romantic. She wanted a very bold man, a
Cid, something that it is not easy to have."

He paused again, and looked at me with some sort of challenge in his
eyes.

"She could have met no one better than you," I said.

He waved his hand a little. "Oh, for that-------" he said deprecatingly.
"Besides, I am dying. I have never been well since I went into your cold
sea, over there, after we left your sister. You remember how I coughed
on board tha