vehement speech. Andres was
silent, dark and serious; but the gaze he turned upon Charles was warm
with affection and admiration. Nothing, Vincente insisted, could be
done now; they must wait and draw into their cause every possible
ultimate assistance and understanding. If the truth were known, he
repeated again and again, the world would be at their feet.

Finally, his enthusiasm, his power, ebbed; his yellow pinched face
sank forward: he was so spent, so delivered to a loose indifference of
body, that he might well have been dead. Charles rose with a formal
Spanish period voicing the appreciation of the honor that had been
his.

"We are all worried about Vincente," Andres proceeded, as they were
descending the vault-like stairs; "there is a shadow on him like bad
luck. But it may be no more than the fever. Our mother thinks he needs
only her love and enough wine jelly." They were again in the
drawing-room with the Escobars; and Charles momentarily resumed the
seat he had left beside Narcisa.

Domingo and his wife were submerged in gloomy reflection, and Andres
sat with his gaze fixed on the marble, patterned in white and black,
of the floor. Suddenly Narcisa raised her head with an air of
rebellion. "It's always like the church," she declared incredibly.
"Everything has got so old that I can't bear it--Vincente as good as
dead and Andres resembling a Jesuit father! Must all my life go on in
this funeral march?" The elder Escobars regarded her in a voiceless
amazement; but Andres said severely:

"You are too young to understand the tragedy of Cuba or Vincente's
heroic spirit. I am ashamed of you--before Charles Abbott."

Narcisa rose and walked swiftly out upon the balcony. They had been,
it seemed to Charles, rather ridiculous with her; it was hard on
Narcisa to have been thrust, at her age, into such a serious affair.
The Escobars, and particularly Vincente, took their responsibility a
little too ponderously. Following a vague impulse, made up both of his
own slightly damaged pride and a sympathy for Narcisa, he went out to
the balcony where she stood with her hands lightly resting on the
railing. Veiled in the night, her youth seemed more mysterious than
immature; he was conscious of an unsteady flutter at her unformed
breast; her face had an aspect of tears.

"You mustn't mind them," he told her; "they are tremendously bothered
because they see a great deal farther than you can. The danger to
Vincente, too