to me--I should think so! I might have been her grandfather,"
responded Winthrop, flapping his hat with his gloves, which he had just
discovered in some unremembered pocket.

In the mean time the dark Torres, lean and solemn, had haunted East
Angels ever since Mrs. Thorne's death. Twice a day, with deep reverence
for affliction, he came to inquire after Garda's health; twice a day,
walking almost on tiptoe, he withdrew. His visits never exceeded ten
minutes in length. So great was his respect that he never sat down. But
underneath all this quietude the feelings, which Manuel had described as
volcanic, were surging within; if they did not show on the surface, that
was the misfortune (or advantage) of having a profound sense of dignity,
and a yellow skin. Garda was now alone in the world, and she was in
great trouble; like the other Gracias friends, Torres believed that all
the recent grief, together with the change in her, had been caused by
her mother's death--Margaret and Winthrop had at least succeeded in
that. But even if all Gracias had known the truth, Torres would never
have known it; he would never have known it because he would never have
believed it. A Torres believed only what was credible, and such a tale
about a Duero would be incredible. In the same way, he had never given
the least credit to the story that Garda was going north--to New York.
Why should Garda go to New York, any more than he, Torres, to Japan? No;
what Garda needed now was not wild travelling about the world with
promiscuous people, but safeguards that were not promiscuous; safeguards
that should be embodied in a single and distinct Arm, a single and
distinguished Name; in short, what he himself could give her--an
Alliance; an Alliance suited to her birth.

So when the visits of affliction had been all accomplished, he started
one morning in his best attire, and his aunt's black boat, rowed by
eight negroes, for Gracias-a-Dios, to ask permission from Reginald
Kirby, guardian, to "address," with reference to an Alliance, the
Dueros' daughter.

The Giron fields, meanwhile, lay idle and empty behind him; he had swept
them of every man.

"Dear Adolfo," said his aunt, who, as a widow with six little children,
was trying hard (for a Giron) to raise something on her plantation that
year, "must you have them all? They are very much needed to-day, we are
so behindhand with everything."

"My aunt, what is sugar compared with our name?"

Madam