what they were, that all of them, even
stout, honest Betty, and little Mrs. Kirby herself, under her high-held
parasol, were set to blushing a little, without knowing why, and to
vaguely adjusting their front hair with a touch or two, only to become
conscious of it later, and say to themselves, angrily, that that boy
ought to have a good horsewhipping! Manuel called upon all his friends
and all his mother's friends (except Garda at East Angels), and could
hardly sit in a chair. Upon seeing him, the idea was that he had been
accustomed to a divan; he seemed to have come from the sipping of
nectar, and to have touched nothing but rose-leaves. Having thus thrown
dust in the eyes of the town, he took his departure; as he had long
threatened, he was going to see the world. He mentioned to Mrs. Harold
that he should try to "take in" New York; and then he sailed on a
coasting schooner for Key West, with four dollars and twenty five-cents
in his pocket.

Gracias knew nothing of the real cause of all this. Madam Ruiz, Manuel's
broad-shouldered and martial-looking, but in reality sighingly gentle,
sentimental step-mother, was not in his confidence with regard to Garda.
But she would not have credited the story, even if she had been, for she
firmly believed her handsome step-son to be invincible from the
Everglades to the Altamaha. During the long, warm, mid-summer
afternoons, when flat Patricio, low in the blue sea, had not a shadow,
this lady, in her thick white house, the broad rooms darkened by the
closed shutters, was in the habit of amusing herself with many romances
about this; for your warm, still countries are ever the land of the
storyteller. Madam Ruiz now and then told her stories to her husband.

"Yes, yes," said that gentleman; "he inherits it all from me." He was
partially paralyzed, and sat all day in his chair; he did not like to
have Manuel about much, he envied him so. He took more comfort in the
children of this second marriage--a flock of brown-skinned, chattering
little girls, who would be sure to grow up dark, lovely, and gentle,
with serene, affectionate eyes, and the sweetest voices in the world, in
which to call him their "dearest papa."

Adolfo Torres meanwhile kept his friend's secret punctiliously, as it
was not to his credit; it was terribly against his credit to have gone
as he did to Garda herself,--so Adolfo thought.

As for Garda, she said, afterwards, that she did not mention it because
it w