"No, no!" said Arthur, hastily, "go on--in your own way."
Mrs Sepulvida lifted her forefinger archly.
"Ah! is it so, Don Arturo? I thought so! Well, it is a great shame that she is not here for you to judge for yourself."
Angry with himself for his embarrassment, and for the rising colour on his cheek, Arthur would have explained himself, but the lady, with feminine tact, did not permit him.
"To proceed: Partly because I did not participate in the prejudices with which the old families here regarded her race and colour, partly, perhaps, because we were both strangers here, we became friends. At first she resisted all my advances--indeed, I think she was more shy of me than the others, but I triumphed in time, and we became good friends. Friends, you understand, Mr. Poinsett, not _confidants_. You men, I know, deem this impossible, but Donna Dolores is a singular girl, and I have never, except upon the most general topics, won her from her habitual reserve. And I possess perhaps her only friendship."
Mrs. Sepulvida shrugged her shoulders, and then borrowed the habitual sceptical formula of San Antonio.
"_Quien sabe?_ But I am rambling again. Now for the case."
She rose, and taking from the drawer of the secretary an envelope, drew out some papers it contained, and referred to them as she went on.
"It appears that a grant of Micheltorena to Salvatierra was discovered recently at Monterey, a grant of which there was no record among Salvatierra's papers. The explanation given is that it was placed some five years ago in trust with a Don Pedro Ruiz, of San Francisco as security for a lease now expired. The grant is apparently regular, properly witnessed, and attested. Don Pedro has written that some of the witnesses are still alive, and remember it."
"Then why not make the proper application for a patent?"
"True, but if that were all, Don Arturo would not have been summoned from San Francisco for consultation. There is something else. Don Pedro writes that another grant for the same land has been discovered recorded to another party."
"That is, I am sorry to say, not a singular experience in our profession," said Arthur, with a smile. "But Salvatierra's known reputation and probity would probably be sufficient to outweigh equal documentary evidence on the other side. It's unfortunate he's dead, and the grant was discovered after his death."