explain them; and she thought that perhaps he might. She was doing her
best, as Lucian's wife--she had been doing it ever since she arrived in
Gracias--to discover the "gold mine" which he saw in this young man; so
far (as she had but little sense of humor) she had not succeeded. Once
she asked Lucian what it was that he found so amusing in the Cuban.

"Oh, well, he has so many fixed ideas, you know," Lucian answered.

His wife said nothing, she, too, had fixed ideas; she could not see,
though she tried to, humbly enough, how any one could help having them.
Torres could now speak a little English; but as Rosalie could talk in
Spanish in a slow, measured sort of way, their conversations, which were
never lively, were carried on in the last-named language; it was
understood in Gracias that they were "great friends."

Torres had been brought from his retirement by Lucian. Lucian, who told
everybody that he delighted in him, had gone down to the Giron
plantation to find him on the very day of his arrival in Gracias; and
Torres, yielding to his friend's entreaties, had consented to appear
again in "society."

In his own estimation, the Cuban had never swerved from his original
posture, of waiting. He had not believed one word of his aunt's story of
Garda's engagement; women were credulous where betrothals were
concerned; they were, indeed, congenitally weak in all such matters.
Manuel--a masculine mind though unregulated--was still absent, engaged
in seeing the world (at Key West); but he had been able to obtain a
good deal of consolation from the society of the Senor Ruiz, who had not
credited the ridiculous tale any more than he himself had.

He had first heard of the senor's disbelief through Madam Giron; he
immediately went over to Patricio to pay his respects to him. Since then
he had paid his respects regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays, just
before sundown. The two never alluded to the story when they were
together, they would have considered it ill-bred to speak familiarly of
such private matters. True, the Senor Ruiz, having been confined for a
long time to his arm-chair, had grown a little lax in the strict
practice of etiquette, and it may have been that he would have enjoyed
just a trifle of conversation upon the rumor in question. But Torres was
firm, Torres kept him up to the mark; the subject had never once been
put into actual words, though the Senor Ruiz skirted all round it,
talking now about Winthrop