"It is certainly as I suggested," said the little olive-faced gentleman. "You have been here three days, and I do not even know what you expect from me yet."
"It is very little. A concession of exploitation in the country inland."
Ormsgill mentioned it, and his companion looked at him with a little smile. "The request can be granted, but I gave you good advice once before, and I venture to offer it again. This Africa is not a healthy country, and it is not, I think, advisable that you should stay here, especially up yonder in the bush. There are gentlemen of some importance there whom you have offended, and we are, it seems, not all forgiving. It is, perhaps, a fact to be deprecated, but one to be counted on."
"One has occasionally to do a thing that doesn't seem advisable," said Ormsgill reflectively.
"In this case the reasons cannot be financial. I heard of your good fortune in Las Palmas."
Ormsgill was not pleased at this, but he laughed. "A little money is not always a fortune. Perhaps it would be permissible for me to express my pleasure that your administrative genius has been recognized?"
Dom Clemente made him a little grave inclination. "I hold authority, but the man who does so seldom sleeps on roses, especially in this country. Well, you still want the concession of exploitation, though the region you mention is not a productive one?"
"There are articles of commerce which come down that way from the interior."
Dom Clemente looked at him steadily. "Ah," he said, "if one could tell what went on there. Still, as you say, there are things we have need of that come down from the interior."
Ormsgill's face was expressionless, though he was not pleased to see a little smile creep into his companion's eyes, but just then another man of very dusky color came up the outside stairway with a big clanking sword strapped on to him, and Dom Clemente rose.
"I make my excuses, but the permit will be ready to-morrow," he said. "In the meanwhile my daughter, who is in the patio, would thank you for several courtesies at Las Palmas."
Ormsgill turned away, and went down to the little pink-washed patio which was filled with straggling flowers and was, at least, comparatively cool. The girl who lay in a big chair did not rise, but signed to him to take another near her side, and then looked up at him with big violet eyes. It did not occur to Ormsgill that there was any significance in the fact that the only two chairs in the patio should be close together, but it struck him that Benicia Figuera was a very well-favored young woman, and very much in harmony with her surroundings. Colorless as her face was, there was a scintillation in her eyes, and a depth of hue in her somewhat full red lips, which with the sweeping lines of her lightly-draped, rounded form suggested that there was in her a full measure of the warm and vivid life of the tropics. Her voice was low and quiet, and her English passable.