as evidently a satirical period with a
decisive clearing of his throat--a-ha! He was a small rotund man with
a gigantic moustache laid without a brown hair misplaced over a mouth
kindly and petulant. His wife, Carmita, obese with indulgent
indolence, her placid expression faintly acid, waved a little hand,
like a blanched almond, indicative of her endless surprise at the
clamor of men. Andres was silent, immobile, faultless in a severity of
black and white.

Charles had begun to admire him inordinately: above everything,
Andres possessed a simple warmness of heart, a generosity of emotion,
together with a fastidious mind. Fortunate combination. And his
person, his gestures and flashing speech, his brooding, were invested
by an intangible quality of romance; whatever he did was absorbing,
dramatic and--and fateful. He was a trifle aloof, in spite of his
impulsive humanity, a thought withdrawn as though by a shadow that
might have been but his unfailing dignity.

Charles' gaze wandered from him to Narcisa, who, Domingo Escobar had
said, resembled a flower bud. As she sat in pale yellow ruffles, with
her slim hands clasped and her composed face framed in a wide dense
stream of hair, she was decidedly fetching. Or, rather, she gave
promise of charm; at present, she was too young to engage him in any
considerable degree. Narcisa, he concluded, was fourteen. At very long
intervals she looked up and he caught a lustrous, momentary
interrogation of big black eyes. A very satisfactory sister for Andres
Escobar to have; and, wondering at the absence of Vincente, the eldest
son, Charles asked Andres about his brother.

A marked constraint was immediately visible in the family around him.
Vincente, he was informed abruptly, was out of Havana, he had had to
go to Matanzas. Later, on the balcony over the Prado, Andres added an
absorbing detail. "Vincente, we think, is in the Party of Liberation.
But you must say nothing. I do not know, Vincente will not speak; but
mama has noticed the gendarmes in front of the house, and when she
drives."

"I should like to talk to him," Charles Abbott declared; "you must
arrange it for me. Look here, there's nobody around, I might as well
tell you that's why I came to Cuba, to fight the cursed Spanish.
I'm--I'm serious, there's nothing I wouldn't do; and if I have to be
killed, why, I am ready for that. It's all worked out in my head,
except some petty little details. Cuba ought to be free; thi