want you to feel that it
was urged upon you; but everything is different to me now, and I wish
you _would_ buy it. I suppose that you are so rich that it wouldn't
matter to you, and it would make us so happy."

"Us?"

"Oh yes, to sell it has long been mamma's hope. I won't say her only
one, because mamma has so many hopes; but this has been the principal
one, the one upon which everything else hung. So few people come to
Gracias--people of our position, I mean (for of course we wouldn't sell
it to any one else)--that it has seemed impossible; there have been only
you and Lucian, and Lucian, you know, has no money at all. But you have
a great deal, they all say, and I almost think you really do like the
place, you look about you so when you come."

"I like it greatly; better than any other place I have seen here."

"He likes it greatly; better than any other place he has seen here,"
repeated Garda, in a delighted tone. She rose and began to walk up and
down the low bank, clapping her hands softly, and smiling to herself.
Then, laughing, she came back to him, her pretty teeth shining beneath
her parted lips. "You are the kindest man in the whole world," she
announced, standing before him. Winthrop laughed also to see how
suddenly happy and light-hearted she had become. "Let us go and tell
mamma," continued Garda. "Poor mamma--I haven't been nice to her. But
now I will be; I shall tell her that you will buy the place, there's
nothing nicer than that. _Then_ we can go to Washington."

"It will take some time, you know," Winthrop suggested.

Her face fell. "Much?" she asked.

"I hardly know; probably a good deal could be done in the course of the
summer. There may be difficulty about getting a clear title;
complications about taxes, tax claims, or the old Spanish grants." He
thought it was as well she should comprehend, in the beginning, that
there would be no going to Washington, for the present at least.

"But in our case there can be no complications, we are the old Spaniards
ourselves," said Garda, confidently.

He was silent.

"It would be very hard to have to wait long," she went on, dejected by
his manner.

"Yes. But it's something to have it sold, isn't it?"

"Of course it is, it's everything," she responded, taking heart again.
"And even if it is long, I am young, I can wait; Lucian is young too;
and--I don't think he will forget me, do you?"

"I want to advise one thing--that you should not talk so